 | Importing Outlook Express Groups into Outlook 2013 on Windows 7Last Updated on Friday, 24 April 2015 10:00 Written by Rob Turner Hits: 4375 |
I had this challenge from a customer with 2000+ contacts in Outlook Express in Groups that they needed to move to Outlook 2013 and stay in groups, Its worthy of a blog post and here is how I did it...
– On the XP machine create a folder on the desktop to match the name of each group in the Outlook Express Address Book
– In the Outlook Express Address book select the first group and press CTRL-A to select all.
– Drag and drop the contacts from the right of the address book that are all now highlighted onto the folder you created on the desktop.
– All the .vcf entries are individual files, You want to get them into one big file so Start > Run > cmd and press enter. Your now in the DOS command prompt and by default it puts you on level below the Desktop folder so you should be able to just type: cd Desktop and press enter.
– The type cd space and the beginning few letters of the folder you created and press tab, it will auto complete with the name of the folder provided its unique and not like anything else on the desktop, press enter.
– You should be in the folder with all the vcards, now type:
copy *.vcf all.vcf
And press enter, you will see it copy all the files into one file called all.vcf
– Transport that all.vcf to the Windows 7 machine, its probably a few hundred k so a thumb drive or attaching to an email should be the quickest ways to get it over.
Now to get that into a group in Outlook is not as simple as importing the file, unfortunately!!
– On the Win7 machine click on the Start button and in Search Programs and Files at the bottom type Contacts and it should find an entry for the Windows Contacts folder. Click it.
– A window will open up and it may already have contacts in it. If it does, create a group and just move them into it so they are out of the way, you can move then back later.
– Click Import and select the all.vcf file you got from the XP computer
– Now select all the contacts and click Export creating a CSV file, call it the name of the group so you can keep track, we went with all the default mapping with the import and export and worked fine.
– In Outlook 2013 at the bottom click People to go into the contacts and create a group
– Now to import the CSV file, Click File > Open & Export > Import/Export. This starts the Import and Export Wizard.
– Choose Import from another program or file, and then click Next.
– Under Select the file type to import, choose the CSV file and click next
– Under File to import, browse to the CSV file you exported and click Open.
– Under Options, choose whether to replace duplicates (existing contacts), create duplicate contacts, or not import duplicates, and click Next.
– Under Select the folder to import from, you should see the name of the Group you created, select it and Click Finish.
– Your contacts in the groups should be transferred, Delete the contacts from the Windows 7 Contact folder
– rinse and repeat for each group you want transferred.
– Buy a 6 pack and enjoy it, you deserve it.
– Buy me a beer/co sending a donation via paypal to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
