How do I export my America Online (AOL) Address Book and Email?How can I convert my AOL files, favorites and Address Book info from the America Online (AOL) program to MSN? I am switching from AOL dialup to a new high-speed connection. Please let me know. While America Online (AOL) is quite popular with a large group of people, it's also a common place for people to learn about the Internet then "graduate" to a more traditional Internet Service Provider. The problem is, AOL has lots of proprietary data formats and their entire AOL software suite seems custom designed to make it hard for you to switch to another service, as you're now realizing. There's no convenient "Export Address Book" function, for example. Search for that phrase in the AOL 9.0 help system and you'll get clear details on how to export from other programs and import those addresses into AOL Mail, but not a word about how to export from AOL Mail. All hope isn't lost, however. There are a number of different solutions that might be able to help you, ranging from the Java-based (and apparently obsolete) AOLeave suite to the inexpensive ($25) commercial application ePreserver. With the kind permission of the developers, I was sent a copy of ePreserver, which let me test out this simple application, and though you might only use it once in your life, it's incredibly fast and easy, probably well worth avoiding the hours of fiddling with free software (at least in my opinion). Here's how easy it was for me to export my address book, favorites and folders (file drawers) from my AOL account into a generic data format suitable for importing into Outlook Express (a format that MSN Mail can import, as I recall)... The first step is to pick which of your screen names you want to copy all the data from:  A word of warning here: if you use more than one screen name, ePreserver appends the subsequent data to the previous, which might well not be what you're expecting. If that's not what you want to have occur, move the files elsewhere before you do the second or third run. Once you've picked the account, you can choose which data you want to export into an Outlook or Outlook Express compatible format:  Next, choose between the two possible output formats:  If you're not sure, choose Outlook Express as it's the more commonly used of the two email programs and can be imported into a wide variety of Windows and Web based email programs (even Google's Gmail, actually). The last step might make you a bit anxious if you're not expecting it: it'll ask for your AOL password. Once you've entered your correct account credentials, the program will then actually log in to your AOL account and grab all of the information and data you specified. In my experience, this took just a few seconds, and the end result was a status report featuring the cheery Successfully imported messages:  That's all there is to it with this program. Again, please realize that there are doubtless other free or lower cost applications out there, I just chose the one that appeared the most professional, since I'd rather have it work right the first time. If $25 is too expensive for your budget, then searching for "aol address book export tool" will doubtless lead you to some other choices, but Connected Software does tell me that ePreserver is the only third-party app that can read the encrypted AOL Address Book (nice of them, eh?). I hope this helps you out!
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. I really am having a hard tiem in what should be an easy access to my aol email since it is supposed to be available to me even though I am no longer a member. No matter what name I sign on with I cannot not get through to my e,mail Perhaps you could transfer it to grje46@verizon.net or at least email the reason I cannnot get it. I would very much like to view my mail. Posted by: Jean at November 5, 2005 5:42 PMQuestion about ePreserver. How about importing procedure for AOL files in ePreserver? Thanks Dave. Eric Yamada Posted by: Eric Yamada at November 17, 2005 10:01 AMEric, ePreserver doesn't make any changes to the original AOL files. This is discussed in the "Common Questions" for ePreserver at http://www.connectedsw.com/Questions/57266 ePreserver can only copy from AOL to something else, it cannot copy anything into AOL. Posted by: Connected Software at November 17, 2005 10:51 PMOkay! Now how 'bout the reverse? How do export files from msn then import them into aol email folders? What was the answer to importing into AOL. i was promised that my address book and emails would be transfered from aol to earthlink and i took you at your word Posted by: gerald h hetrick at December 23, 2005 5:27 PMWhy am I unable to send. receive. forward e-mail from friends and family who have an AOL address? I would appreciate yor assistance. Rob, what actually happens when you try to email someone on AOL? A lot of AOL users now have an anti-spam system where they automatically reject all mail from people not in their address book: could that be the problem? Posted by: Dave Taylor at January 3, 2006 11:23 AMAOL is the biggest bunch of spam and crapware Dave, Bad news, Andrea. I don't know of any way you can export the data from the Mac version of AOL. Posted by: Dave Taylor at March 14, 2006 10:52 PMI'm helping a friend move from Mac OS9 AOL 5 to Mac OS/X 10.4, AOL for Mac OS/X. New machine, no version 9 on it. It turns out Apple had a tool to extract the address book to a text file - see Hat tip to EMailman, http://www.emailman.com/aol/ Posted by: JohnS at March 25, 2006 2:10 AMFree software from AOL that converts AOL address book to most PDA's and also to Outlook Posted by: Jeff at April 1, 2006 7:07 AMHi: I discovered a better (and free)way. Use the AOL Intellisync program (free download on AOL) to sync to Outlook or Outlook Express. Then you can easily import that file to another email service. I did it with Yahoo. If you search sync (or Intellisync)on AOL you get complete directions. Posted by: Nancy at April 1, 2006 4:18 PMPlease help! I am not sure of my aol e-mail address. I think it's something like tutante1. Because they don't have an opening for your choice of e-mail addresses I can't remember which it was. also can you advise me of a carrier that is friendly and gives tech support. Thank you Posted by: edwina howard at April 2, 2006 9:09 AMePreserver is ace! From viewing your page to thinking about buying and then buying ePreserver, downloading the program and, finally, transferring my aol info took less than half an hour! I've finally got the courage to leave aol and save a lot of money. Thanks Posted by: Les Leckie at June 25, 2006 8:08 AMOnce I use epreserver to transfer my emails from AOL to Outlook, how do I then get them transferred to my gmail account? And will the "From" fields still look like they originally did? Thanks! Posted by: Richie at June 28, 2006 12:45 PMi don't even have an address book once i got on rr and transfered the address book to outlook express -- i went back to aol and don't have an address book how do i get it back? Posted by: don mikulski at September 14, 2006 8:38 PMAs of May 31, 2006, AOL IntelliSync will no longer export your AOL address book. AOL sends you to the Plaxo website, but so far it only imports other address books (Outlook, etc.), and does not import AOL's. Posted by: Joan at October 3, 2006 12:56 PMYou can find AOL Downloads since beginning of the year : http://downloads.channel.aol.com/windowsproducts I'm a Mac OS X user and I tried AOL Service Assistant. It converts aol archive to Apple Mail. It works good. I try to convert my old AOL Windows version PFC to MBOX format. I tried AOL-Dump, AOL Leave,... frewares. But there several problems with date format and characters, because I'm French. I don't find any solution with Windows version. I'll give informations if I succeed. See you soon. Posted by: Yves at October 18, 2006 7:40 AMHow can I copy or transfer my info in my old AOL screen name to a new screen name in same account to a new aAOL screen name? Hi Dave. I am a grandmother, and am not sure what URL means and 9+12. One is my Aol and the other is my Comcast and the latter is the code for my aol address. What else do I need to do? Posted by: Marybeth T. Dow at February 3, 2007 1:20 PMI SIGNED UP FOR AOL.COM AIM MAIL AND IT DIDN'T BRING MY MAIL FROM AOL OVER TO THIS NEW ONE AND I HAVE TO HAVE ALL MY NEW, OLD AND SENT MAIL. HOW DO I GET IT??? Posted by: Debbie at February 15, 2007 10:14 AMI want to transfer my AOL filing cabinet from my old PC (windows XP)to my new PC (Vista) where I already installed AOL. What should I do? Posted by: Christine at March 8, 2007 11:29 PMI just removed myself from paid email (earthlink) to yahoo. I need to transfer my address book to yahoo. how am I able to do this for free? I cannot get on my aol mail because it says my screen name is expired and I was just on my aim mail early this morning. I would like to transfer all existing aim mail to another email, help! Posted by: Cindi at March 15, 2007 5:54 PMHi - I have an aol email address, and have a new one that I am going to be using. I've had my email account for quite some time, and it would be so much work to input all of the data on my new AOL email address. Is there a function that will allow me to transfer from one AOL account to another that anyone is aware of? Please let me know!!! Thanks so much!!! Tressa Posted by: Tressa at March 23, 2007 10:46 AMI have the AOL icon on my PALM TREO desktop, and I can get to my email from there just fine, but my AOL address book is not there ...how can I get it there? my contacts are in the "contact list" on the TREO, but I can not get to them when in "write mail" in the AOL area....how do I get the AOL address book into the AOL icon area???? Posted by: s at March 23, 2007 2:20 PMI lost some of my aol email when I had to downloaded AOL 9. I accidentally downloaded it twice. I didn't realize it. I apparently downloaded over emails. Is there software that can retrieve deleted emails? Posted by: Jackie at March 29, 2007 11:34 AMI want to transfer my AOL filing cabinet from my old PC (windows XP)to my new PC (Vista) where I already installed AOL. What should I do? Thanks, Found this Q&A. Went to the Plaxo.com site. Took awhile to get through the download, install and setup. Once I did that, getting my AOL address book into my Plaxo contacts and then synchronizing the Outlook address book to Plaxo was pretty easy. Took about an hour from start to finish, which is a lot shorter than typing everything in by hand, and now I don't have to worry about it ever again since I can keep it synchronized online. Looks like there are some other features that I'll need to try, like automatically notifying all your contacts when your own information changes. Posted by: Matt at April 14, 2007 5:39 PMDear Dave: When you are discussing epreserver you say: "If you use more than one screen name, ePreserver appends the subsequent data to the previous...If that's not what you want to have occur, move the files elsewhere before you do the second or third run." How do we get this done'??? Have new Screen Name, Unable to use as Have No Please note that specific questions about how ePreserver works or whether it can accomplish specific tasks are far better directed to the programmers / company than to me. Posted by: Dave Taylor at April 19, 2007 12:02 PMplease tell me how to get my addresses from Juno email to aol. thank you Posted by: Nelda at May 10, 2007 4:33 PMhello... i have now dsl high speed.. opening the aol page by using internet explorer. i dont see my favorites list. how i am able to open my favorites from the explorer page... Posted by: SashkaPR at May 23, 2007 9:09 AMAOL Filing Cabinet Files are in Windows XP and using AOL 9, are located in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\C_AOL 9.0\organize C_AOL 9.0 may contain an A B C, etc after it, depending how many AOL 9 upgrades you have done. To figure out which installation you are using, right click the AOL icon in you Windows Quick Launch Task bar, on the START Bar, choose Properties, and the Link to the AOL folder location AOL 9.0 a b c, etc, will be noted. The organize folder contains the default backup of the Personal Filing Cabinet. AOL's default is to back it up every 4 weeks. To manually back it up, load AOL, and sign off. Click on the Read mail icon on the top left of the screen (or hit CNTL + R, on the keyboard) On the top right of the mail window, choose, Mail Options, and then Set Mail Preferences. Choose the Managed Saved mail link on the top right of the window, and choose Backup. To adjust default setting, select Preferences, after selecting Backup from the Managed Save Mail link. Once backed up, the most current file is actually saved at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\C_AOL 9.0\backup When backing up, when I have to reload my OS, move my Filing Cabinet to another computer, etc, I copy both the Organize, and the Backup folder, Just in case. On the new computer, or new version of AOL, I manually place the copied Backup and Organize Folders, back in the default AOL Folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\C_AOL 9.0
I've been an AOL customer for probably 15 years but now also have high speed internet thru my cable company. However, I am leary about changing my email accounts and losing emails, contacts and info. My curiosity about this whole AOL 'free' email is growing as it would save money I'm still wasting as I keep my AOL service to keep my AOL email accounts in 'bringing my own service'. The 'free' email is also very confusing to me. Can I actually use (or keep) the same email addresses I currently have with AOL's 'free' email as well as AIM screen names??? Or will I be forced to change them as they would be 'currently in use'? I'd really like to drop AOL service but not my emails. Posted by: Nancie K at July 11, 2007 6:00 PMMy HD crashed and I reloaded AOL 9.0, but my ADDRESS BOOK is gone! (I thought it was AOL-based not computer-based.) It IS available on AOL via the Web, but I don't see a utility for transfering my AOL Address Book from Web back to my Computer. Any ideas? Thanks. Posted by: Jeff at July 24, 2007 2:44 PMHI I was hoping when I transferred my AOL account from Windows 98 to XP, the Address Book, emails, etc. would transfer but they didn't. How can I transfer those files to my new AOL? Where do I look? What do I do first? Posted by: Apres Ski at September 9, 2007 11:02 PMIf you want to use an email software as Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, Entourage,... instead as AOL interface, do as follow : - Open Outlook Express (for example) Name : Jo White (for example) SMTP server : smtp.aol.com (smtp.fr.aol.com for France) IMAP port : 143 (not default port) Like this, you use standard mailbox as eml or mbox format. In Windows platform, to import your AOL PFC mails and adress book, I think ePreserver is the best one, but you can try freewares like : http://webpages.charter.net/bobalston/Documents/email-extract-and-archive.htm/ How can I get my juno e-mail sent directly to my aol address just found your site and "booked" lotsa good stuff here. I have a imac, and was wondering if your knowledge extends past PCs to us Apple folk? Posted by: jack at December 15, 2007 11:06 PMQuite so, Jack. Actually I much prefer the Mac and have been using 'em for many, many years! Posted by: Dave Taylor at December 16, 2007 9:38 PMQuestion. I am presently on the slow method, using the phone..now I am changing to a high speed very shortly but the question is ..it is with a different ISP than AOL..I would like to transfer my address book and other saved documents from this ISP to my new one..I have paid AOL for a year so this is still good until March 19th..my new highspeed will be installed this Thursday, so I will have two providers, one AOL and the other one which happens to be my TV cable company..can you help me to transfer this data to my new highspeed? Regards Harry Posted by: Harry Tucker at December 23, 2007 11:55 AMPLAXO PLAXO PLAXO.......I am seeking to get my dad's favorites from AOL to his new iMac and I thought I'd mention what I did to get his contacts. In short, check out www.plaxo.com. It's FREEEEEEE. I setup his plaxo account w/his aol (on Windows) about a year ago. When he just got his new iMac, I logged into his mac; downloaded plaxo for the mac; setup the account and synced!!!! That's it. It just doesn't get much easier than that. I also did the same for my gmail account on my mac....Plaxo works & it doesn't get much easier than that. Not to mention I could "clean up" my dad's contacts finally in Mac's address book a lot easier than in AOL's terrible interface. I hope this helps someone. If anyone has any working free solution for aol favorites (version 9) to any bookmark.htm format, I'd like to know. Terry Posted by: Terry Lee at January 21, 2008 10:25 AMI solved the AOL 9 Favorites export!!! 1. Login to AOL from a regular (ie, firefox, safari) at http://www.aol.com. 2. Go to "my aol", usually in the top left corner 3. When prompted to "Import AOL Class Favorite Places", say "yes". this imports your AOL favorites. 4. At the bottom of the menu, there's an "export" function which will export to bookmarks.html. 5. Import the file into your favorite browser and clean-up all the AOL specific stuff that you don't want to keep. Voila!!!! You are done and it's free!!!! Terry Posted by: Terry Lee at January 21, 2008 11:36 AMBecause AOL does not offer DSL (Broadband) or whatever the term is for FAST DIAL UP, I had to go with QWEST. I would have PREFERRED TO STAY WITH AOL BUT dial up was becoming too bothersome. Had to wipe my drive and reload aol...how can I get my address book back...its on the web version of aol by not on my pc version???? Posted by: Ray Neiland at February 12, 2008 12:18 AMI want to import my address book and favorites list FROM Juno to Yahoo. Will you tell me how to find those instructions? Please. Posted by: Earl Cotten at March 11, 2008 5:05 PMMy wife is staring an online business and wanted to migrate all of her AOL addresses to a new gmail account - I can see how this software does it for PC's but she has an iMAC - is there any way we can do this on a mac? Posted by: David Palmer at April 5, 2008 8:42 AMAs of April 2008, ePreserver supports converting AOL to Gmail. For ePreserver to work, you must be using the AOL client, such as AOL 8 or AOL 9 (but not AOL 10.) HI, HI. AOL WHAT THIEFS. BOUGHT GATEWAY LT HSN JULY 20/08 CALLED ALO FOR FREE 6 MONTTH TRIAL? JULY 22 08 THY BILLED MY BEBT CARD A MONTHLY CHARGE. I CALLED 40 MIN. LATER GOING BACK&FORTH I KEEP BEING Posted by: mark lerner at July 22, 2008 4:32 PMhi dave, after reading your interesting article about ePreserver, i went ahead and purchased it. on the first screen, it doesn't seem to allow me to type in my screename and at the bottom it tells me: "aol &/or compuserve not installed on this computer" or sthing to that matter as it is in french. is that a software glitch or do i need to re-install aol to be able to use ePreserver to get my adress book (i.e. being connected & logged in to aol isn't enough..) thank you in advance for your prompt response. Posted by: olivier janssens at July 28, 2008 6:51 AMThat seems very odd, Olivier. I would suggest that you reinstall AOL, making sure you have the latest version, then also ensure that you have the latest version of ePreserver. If that fails, contact the company and see what they can suggest. Posted by: Dave Taylor at August 14, 2008 3:23 PMcan you tell me how to export my address book from AOL to Bento box? Posted by: Nick at September 13, 2008 8:04 PMhow do i take this aol screen name (htorres428@aol.com) and make a new aol account with it. I no longer want to be connected with the same aol account as my ex wife. thanks Posted by: harry at September 22, 2008 10:11 PMI have a lot to say, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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