Importing Outlook 2003 Contacts to WSS

[Dan]

I posted this to the WSS newsgroup, with no joy and a recommendation to post
it here. So, hopefully someone can help.

I am running the latest greatest version of Outlook - 2003 with BCM, on
WinXP SP2 box. Brand new box by the way. I am attempting to import Contacts
from Outlook 2003 into WSS using standard WSS import capablity associated
with the Contacts Web Part. When I click on the "Import Contacts" link in
the WSS Contacts Web Part I am asked to insert the Office2003 Professional
CD. The CD will spin for about 5 minutes after inserting and eventually
returns an error-
""Installation Error, File Not Found
A Required Installation File SKU111.CAB could not be found"
I searched the CD found the file and tried again. No joy. I moved the file
to a directory on my hard drive, but no joy again! Same error.
Can anyone tell me what's up and how this can be overcome.
Also, the WSS server is a remote server box not part of my domain and the
box does not have Office 2003 installed.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,

Dan

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

It's probably trying to install the Address Book Control, which is an
Outlook component normally installed on first use. You can try running
Office 2003 setup from Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and explicitly
installiing that component from the list of Outlook components.

Alternatively, export from your contacts folder to an Excel spreadsheet.
Then open the spreadsheet and define a named range for the data you want to
import. You should then be able to use the Create | Import Spreadsheet
command to create a new contacts list containing the data from the
spreadsheet.

 

[Dan]

Sue,
Thanks for the repy, but it gets stranger.
I recycled the box and went through the exercise again. This time a differnt .cab file is the problem
"ZD561402.CAB" cannot be found. Well, I found the file as part of the Project2003 installation and pointed the installer to it.
It finished the installation, tries to open outlook then errors out again.
The error message is
MANAGED MAPI SERVICE CATASTROPHIC FAILURE
unknown error

What next?

 

[Dan]

Ok here is the answer.
The Catastrophic Failure was being caused because the Address Book was
pointed to "Business Contacts" rather than Contacts.
Business Contacts is part of BCM and once I told the Address Book to use
Contacts it worked ok.

 

[Dan]

Ok spoke too soon. It worked once without the erro, but after a reboot and
retry it still gives the error but allows the import. Very odd!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You can probably isolate whether this is a BCM issue (I suspect it is) by
trying again with a profile that doesn't include BCM.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Dan]

Sue,

Sure as shootin, when I pick a profile not using BCM there is no
"Catastrophic Error" message displayed.
So there we go. BCM! Nice idea, works pretty well but (obviously) has its
problems.

Dan