Importing Contact Causes Outlook 2003 to Shut Down

[celderkin]

I have a cvs file to import. I have three contact files in Outlook 2003. I
wish to update each with a cvs file. The first two times, it worked fine.
With the third contrac file, it begins the process, the progress bar shows
about 1/4 of the way, and then Outlook closes. No error messages are shown --
it just closes.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

I have a cvs file to import. I have three contact files in Outlook 2003. I
wish to update each with a cvs file. The first two times, it worked fine.
With the third contrac file, it begins the process, the progress bar shows
about 1/4 of the way, and then Outlook closes. No error messages are
shown --
it just closes.

Why do you need it them in three contact folders at once? Why not just use a
single folder?

 

[Karl Timmermans]

If you are importing the same CSV file to 3 different folders then odds are
"very very" high that you have a corrupt contact item (or items) and/or pst
file (you didn't mention if the target folders were empty at the start of
the import).

Depending on what the root cause of the problem is - running ScanPST on
your PST file may help (assuming of course that you are not importing to
Exchange folders in which case you'll need to talk to your Exch Admin).

As an aside, something we've found to make Outlook "very moody" is having
the "Check for duplicate contacts" checked when you import so might be
something else to look at. If it's set, uncheck it and try again.

Karl
--
____________________________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"
http://www.contactgenie.com

 

[celderkin]

Each contact file is associated with a difference email account. Why do you
ask?

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

Each contact file is associated with a difference email account. Why do you
ask?

Contacts folders span all mail accounts. Any mail account in Outlook can send
to any contact in any using any Contacts folder.

 

[celderkin]

Karl and Brian,
I think Karl is on to something. The contact folder in question is messing
up in mail merge, too.

1. Is ScanPST part of Outlook 2003?

2. Given Brian's observation that I need only one folder, I could perhaps
export all three to a large CSV file and reimport to the default "Contact"
folder and then delete the other two. Does this make sense? Is there a way to
"batch dedupe" duplicate entries?

Thanks for your help, guys.

 

[Karl Timmermans]

Re: ScanPST - yes it is part of Office - forget the exact location of it
for O'2K3 (O'2K7 is in the Office\Outlook program directory, Would run it
and determine if you still have a problem left. If all three folders are OK
after ScanPST - then you're only issue is going to be to consolidate the
contact folders (which makes a whole lot of sense to me based on the
description provided)

Re: Copying data

#1 - Would really advise against using Export/Import for this (given your
description - seriously doubt would work any better than import so would be
an exercise in futility in any case - problem isn't going to go away with
exporting, if contact items are corrupt - same issue will occur). If you
can fix the underlying problem via ScanPST then all you need to do is
<Copy> the contacts to the "folder of choice".

#2 - Batch de-duping - lots of 3rd party options available - just do a
search on Google (and you can also review our offering in the mix -
http://www.contactgenie.com/dupe_manager_4_outlook.htm or
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm (the standalone DupeMgr
is actually also fully integrated into and part of CG Toolkit). ***Note ---
if your PST is corrupt - also pretty safe bet some kind of error/message is
going to be encountered/reported by any of the ContactGenie programs)

Re: Misc

Simply deleting folders will not solve any underlying issues if the root
cause is PST related - may avoid issues in the short run but sooner or
later those are going to come back and visit you (and do what all good
things that you don't want or expect will do - bite......... as well as
most likely inflict needless aggravation on any other 3rd party product
that may use the PST file for something that can only be corrected by you).

Some trivia about corrupt Outlook data.....

It is very possible to work with Outlook data and never know that there are
one or more underlying issues which can be caused by any number of things.
To the end-user, it's a perfect world - until the corrupted portion of the
file is accessed and the quickest way of doing that is to retrieve every
contact item in a folder (most people do not access each and every one of
their contacts on a daily basis). Some issues we've run across involved
very old contacts that went through a PST2PST export/import process a long
time in the past and some internal fields didn't have the right info in
them (are the 2 related - don't know for sure - it could just be a
coincidence that's been seen a few times). Failed "sync" processes can also
create problems unknown to the owner until there is an attempt to access a
particular piece of information - not a fault of Outlook but it is the
Outlook data that has the problem)

Karl

--
____________________________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"
http://www.contactgenie.com