You must first enter a valid email address for this contact beforeOutlook can send mail to it

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brooks
  • Start date Start date
B

Brooks

Version: Outlook 2003

I imported an medium size address book from Thunderbird via a CSV
file. Whenever I choose new message to this contact, I get the error
as listed above:

You must first enter a valid email address for this contact before
Outlook can send mail to it

I have tried top open the record in question and then save, but I
still get this error. How can I resolve this, if possible?

Thanks, Brooks
 
Have you checked to see that you mapped your fields correctly and that the
email field for these Contacts contain a valid, resolved electronic address?
That error message tells you they do not.
 
Russ:

I figured out a work around, the field indeed mapped to the email
address field.

What I have done that seems to resolve my issue is the following:

Open a contact.

Double click into the actual email address, which opens the email
properties.

I change or modify the internet format field, even just adjust it to
the default choice of "Let outlook decide the best sending format"

select OK.

Then the right click command for sending a new message to the contact
works like a charm. When they imported, the name must not be
associated with the email address.

Regards,
Brooks
 
I am getting the same error from outlook. I have imported over 600 contacts
as I work for an organization with many members and cringe at the thought of
having to manually open each one and change email settings for this feature
to work. There must be a solution that can be applied en mass. Does anyone
have an answer?

Russ Valentine said:
Importing never resolves the addresses. That was your problem.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Brooks said:
Russ:

I figured out a work around, the field indeed mapped to the email
address field.

What I have done that seems to resolve my issue is the following:

Open a contact.

Double click into the actual email address, which opens the email
properties.

I change or modify the internet format field, even just adjust it to
the default choice of "Let outlook decide the best sending format"

select OK.

Then the right click command for sending a new message to the contact
works like a charm. When they imported, the name must not be
associated with the email address.

Regards,
Brooks
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Resolution to issue mailing contacts imported from CSV

Hello

I was in the same boat with over 900 contacts to correct the issue in.

I could not find a workaround to process the email addresses, but i did know that opening a contact, adding a space to the email address, removing it, and then saving the contact would fix the issue for that contact.

So that's enter, tab 7 times, space, backspace, Control -S to save, and close the window, and down to the next record.

I just needed to do that 900+ times.

Enter: Autohotkey, the universal macro writing program.

http://www.autohotkey.com/

I installed the program, read up on the syntax and wrote a script.

^!o::
Loop 900 (or however many contacts are in the folder)
{
Send {enter}{tab 7}{Space}{Backspace}^s{Alt Down}{F4}{Alt Up}{Down}
}

And saved and compiled it.

The first line says run this when you press CTRL-ALT-O.
So I ran the macro writer, opened outook, went to the contact window, changed to mailing list view, and pressed CTRL-ALT-O.

The macro went through and took about 3 minutes to process all of the contacts.

-Noah

Meg84 said:
I am getting the same error from outlook. I have imported over 600 contacts
as I work for an organization with many members and cringe at the thought of
having to manually open each one and change email settings for this feature
to work. There must be a solution that can be applied en mass. Does anyone
have an answer?

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

> Importing never resolves the addresses. That was your problem.
> --
> Russ Valentine
> [MVP-Outlook]
> "Brooks" wrote in message
> news:4e3ff2dd-22c2-4dd9-a6d3-97a287e326fc@g21g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> > Russ:
> >
> > I figured out a work around, the field indeed mapped to the email
> > address field.
> >
> > What I have done that seems to resolve my issue is the following:
> >
> > Open a contact.
> >
> > Double click into the actual email address, which opens the email
> > properties.
> >
> > I change or modify the internet format field, even just adjust it to
> > the default choice of "Let outlook decide the best sending format"
> >
> > select OK.
> >
> > Then the right click command for sending a new message to the contact
> > works like a charm. When they imported, the name must not be
> > associated with the email address.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Brooks
> >
> >
> >
> > On Nov 25, 5:16 pm, "Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]"
> > wrote:
> >> Have you checked to see that you mapped your fields correctly and that
> >> the
> >> email field for these Contacts contain a valid, resolved electronic
> >> address?
> >> That error message tells you they do not.
> >> --
> >> Russ Valentine
> >> [MVP-Outlook]"Brooks" wrote in message
> >>
> >> news:e4cb906b-40c5-4159-9abe-7bb322ee1394@s36g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> >>
> >> > Version: Outlook 2003
> >>
> >> > I imported an medium size address book from Thunderbird via a CSV
> >> > file. Whenever I choose new message to this contact, I get the error
> >> > as listed above:
> >>
> >> > You must first enter a valid email address for this contact before
> >> > Outlook can send mail to it
> >>
> >> > I have tried top open the record in question and then save, but I
> >> > still get this error. How can I resolve this, if possible?
> >>
> >> > Thanks, Brooks
> >
>
Click to expand...
 
This was a bit easier

upc_head said:
I was in the same boat with over 900 contacts to correct the issue in.
<snip>
I installed the program, read up on the syntax and wrote a script.
<snip>
The macro went through and took about 3 minutes to process all of the contacts.
Click to expand...

One of my users had over 2000 contacts, most of which were imported from a csv file. (All from the csv file exhibited the symptoms exactly as described above.) I exported the entire contacts folder to Excel, created a new contacts folder and imported from the Excel file.

That worked great, so I deleted the original contacts folder (it was a subfolder anyway) and renamed the new folder the same as the old one.

Hope this helps someone.

- Eric
 
Last edited:
I solved the problem this way:

I imported again my data from Excel but this time, i spread the field "e-mail" and associated my e-mail data with "e-mail address" instead of just "e-mail".

Now it works ;)
 
Back
Top