Outlook 2002 contacts and compatibility with Windows Mail

[AKM11919]

I had a PC on which I was running Outlook 2002, and recently the motherboard
fried, so I upgraded to a new PC with Vista Home Premium. I have since been
using the free Windows Mail application (what used to be Outlook Express on
PCs running XP and older versions of Windows,) and I have decided that
Windows Mail is sufficient for my needs. I did have the hard drive of my old
PC backed up, so all of my contacts that I had saved with Outlook are on an
external hard drive. My question is about the compatibility of the contact
files between Outlook 2002 and the latest version of Windows Mail. Is it
possible to simply copy the contact files from the backup of my old PC to the
Contacts folder on my new PC? Will Windows Mail recognize them?

 

[Russ Valentine]

There has never been any "compatibility" between Outlook and Outlook Express
or its successor, Windows Mail. Nor is there any such thing as "contact
files" in Outlook. There is only one file that hold all Outlook data. Your
Contacts are simply one folder within that file. Accordingly, the only way
to transfer Contacts from Outlook to is to export your Contacts Folder to a
format that Outlook Express/Windows Mail can recognize, such as CSV.
Obviously, doing so will require that you have a valid installation of
Outlook that could perform that export.

 

[AKM11919]

Thank you. That's kind of what I figured. Now let's hope that I saved the
..csv file(s) I created when I was using Outlook and that they are also saved
in the backup folder on my external hard drive!

 

[Karl Timmermans]

If #1) you don't have the CSV file(s) and #2) you can't get to a system with
Outlook installed and #3) the contacts are reasonably important - you may
find the personal license for ContactGenie Toolkit of interest - one of the
24 functions allows you to export data from a standalone PST
file -http://www.contactgenie.com/cgtoolkit.htm

Karl

______________________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer/DataPorter/Exporter/Toolkit
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2007"
http://www.contactgenie.com