"Add Sender to Contacts" not an option

[Ken Zenachon]

Hey, group,

My Scenario:
I was running Office 2000 and updated Outlook to 2003 (by way of a
custom install using an Office 2003 Pro installation disk), while
leaving the rest of the Office 2000 suite intact.
I'm running WinXP Pro, pre-SP1.

My Problem:
Right-clicking on a sender's email address in the mail view is
supposed open a context menu with "Add Sender to Contacts" appearing
as an option, or so I'm told by the Outlook 2003 help system.
Unfortunately, no such option appears. I've tried doing this from the
message list, from the preview pane and from an opened email message.
No dice.

Also, I'm a bit cloudy as to the relationship between the Windows
Address Book and Outlook's Address Book. Clearly the WAB exists
whether or not Outlook is on the system. Do the two directories
somehow become linked when Outlook is installed?


Help...!


]-[

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

What context menu to you see with a R click on the email address, then?
Is your Outlook Address Book Service included in your profile and configured
correctly?
Why did you upgrade only Outlook? There is much functionality you will lose
in that scenario, and you obviously have the whole suite.

 

[Ken Zenachon]

Hi, Russ,

I was playing around a bit trying to figure out what was wrong and
noticed that some messages gave me the proper context menu with the
"missing" options, while others did not. A little investigative work
revealed the reason why: Messages for which I could not call up the
proper context menu *do not contain internet header information*.


This, of course, begs the question, "why don't they have internet
headers?". That question, I cannot answer, but I can tell you that I
had been using OE 6.x for mail until installing Outlook 2003 (Outlook
2000 was my contact database at the time) and I exported all my
messages from OE to Outlook 2003 during the switchover.

As for why I upgraded to only Outlook, well, I used Word and Excel
2003 and, frankly, I don't like them. Outlook is the only program in
the Office suite with any *real* significant improvements over Office
2000.

So any idea where all my headers went?

]-[

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Well I would guess the headers never survived the export. Many things don't.
I almost never recommend using Import and Export functions with Outlook if
it can be avoided.

I also do not recommend mixing versions of Office products. Indeed, Outlook
got the major facelift in Office 2003, but the other products are certainly
not WORSE than Office XP. If you want my advice, upgrade the whole Suite.
You'll lose lost a lot of Outlook functionality if you don't.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Hi, Russ,

I was playing around a bit trying to figure out what was wrong and
noticed that some messages gave me the proper context menu with the
"missing" options, while others did not. A little investigative work
revealed the reason why: Messages for which I could not call up the
proper context menu *do not contain internet header information*.


This, of course, begs the question, "why don't they have internet
headers?". That question, I cannot answer, but I can tell you that I
had been using OE 6.x for mail until installing Outlook 2003 (Outlook
2000 was my contact database at the time) and I exported all my
messages from OE to Outlook 2003 during the switchover.

As for why I upgraded to only Outlook, well, I used Word and Excel
2003 and, frankly, I don't like them. Outlook is the only program in
the Office suite with any *real* significant improvements over Office
2000.

So any idea where all my headers went?

]-[

What context menu to you see with a R click on the email address, then?
Is your Outlook Address Book Service included in your profile and configured
correctly?
Why did you upgrade only Outlook? There is much functionality you will lose
in that scenario, and you obviously have the whole suite.

 

[Ken Zenachon]

Well I would guess the headers never survived the export. Many things don't.

I almost never recommend using Import and Export functions with Outlook if
it can be avoided.

I won't mourn the loss of the headers, much...
Is there a better way to get my OE messages into Outlook?

I also do not recommend mixing versions of Office products. Indeed, Outlook
got the major facelift in Office 2003, but the other products are certainly
not WORSE than Office XP. If you want my advice, upgrade the whole Suite.
You'll lose lost a lot of Outlook functionality if you don't.

I tell ya, I don't feel as though I'm missing any functionality. I use
Outlook for email & contacts and I use Word for typing letters. Rarely
the twain shall meet. I can't even remember the last time I did mail
merge, nevermind something more "advanced". What am I missing out on?

KZ

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Hard to say so far because we haven't seen any users upgrade only Outlook
2003. From past experience it would be WordMail and successful integration
with the Outlook Address Book. Let us know what you see.

 

[Ken Zenachon]

Russ, regarding the stripped headers problem:
Will I have more luck if I use an intermediary to transfer messages
between OE6 and OL2003? For example, OE6 > Eudora > OL2003. Would my
emails arrive with their heads attached this way?

KZ

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

I have no way to know. Why do you need to continue transferring messages? I
assumed you were only importing once to migrate from one application to the
other. What happens if you just drag and drop between the applications?

 

[Ken Zenachon]

I have no way to know. Why do you need to continue transferring messages? I

assumed you were only importing once to migrate from one application to the
other. What happens if you just drag and drop between the applications?

Oh, I don't want to continue transferring messages, I want to do it
once and do it right so that I can lay OE to rest once and for all.
I'm happy to do the transfer again if it's gonna work.

Messages dragged from OE cannot be dropped into OL2003 folders. Silly
if you ask me, but then, nobody's asked me.

KZ

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Try exporting from OE instead of importing to Outlook to preserve more of
the original message information.

 

[Ken Zenachon]

That's what I did, Russ. That's how the headers were lost.

KZ

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

The original question was about preserving the date stamp. That's what's
preserved and not reset when you export from OE. .