Although I try to read most of your ‘help’ articles, I don’t remember having seen this problem. The recent article re: saving IE favorites reminded me to ask a similar question for saving email addresses. I used Outlook Express in the past (after reformatting I switched to Outlook, primarily due to this address book problem). Prior to having my hard drive reformatted due to a virus, I tried to save my addresses to no avail. I don’t remember the specifics, but the pop-up window for’saving’ or maybe it was ‘exporting’ my email addresses, was confusing. Bottom line, I wasn’t able to save my address book to disk. Someone then told me that you can’t save it in Outlook Express, and that you have to export it first to Outlook and then save it. I tried that as well and was still unable to do it.
Is it me or is there a way to save the address book from Outlook Express? I actually like it better than Outlook, and may switch back to it, if the address book problem can be resolved.
How calmly you say that you had to reformat your hard drive due to a virus. Me, I’d be ranting about “that $#$#@$ virus forcing me to $#@$@ rebuild my $#@$@ system.” Oh, and that reminds me: when was the last time that you, dear reader, backed up your essential data?
But on to this specific question!
There is indeed a way to export your address books or business cards in Microsoft Outlook Express:
- On the Tools menu, click Address Book.
- On the File menu, point to Export, and then click Address Book or Business Card(vcard).
- If you are exporting an address book, click the address book you want to export, click Export, and then proceed through the wizard. If you are exporting a business card, locate and click the .vcf file you want to export, and then click Save.
It turns out that Outlook Express will also let you import addresses (Microsoft calls them Address Books or Business Cards, though, perhaps just to confuse everyone):
- On the Tools menu, click Address Book.
- On the File menu, point to Import, and then click Address Book or Business Card (vcard).
- If you are importing an address book, click the address book you want to import, and then click Import. Depending on the type of address book you are importing, either locate and click the address book file, and then click Open, or proceed through the wizard. If you are importing a business card, locate and click the .vcf file you want to import, and then click Save.
Outlook Express can export addresses to the following two formats:
- Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book
- Text File (comma Separated Values)
More interestingly, it can import address data from the following different formats:
- Eudora Pro or Light Address Book (through v3.0)
- LDIF – LDAP Data Interchange Format
- Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book
- Microsoft Internet Mail for Windows 3.1 Address Book
- Netscape Address Book (v2 or v3)
- Netscape Communicator Address Book (v4)
- Text File (comma Separated Values)
- Business Card (vCard)
Don’t forget that if your former favorite email program isn’t listed as a direct import format it’s still the case that you can probably export from that program into a common format (like a CSV / comma separated values file) and then important that directly into Microsoft Outlook Express.
If you have subdirectories in address book in Outlook Express, that might be trouble. Check out this MS support article on the subject.
If need to get the addresses back out of Outlook then this Earthlink support document offers a good walkthrough of the procedure you’ll need to take.
Hope that gets you back to being able to pick your favorite email program based on overall functionality, not just address book importation capabilities! Oh, and while you’re evaluating options, why not check out the powerful and open source Thunderbird email program?
my outlook express dowmloads only part of my mails (only 10 at a time)from gmail. How do I get all my mails downloaded?
my emails are ‘piggy backing’ onto the email i originally sent, with a ‘+’ sign to the left of the email in the inbox, i have to click the ‘+’ to see the email(s), : how can i ‘undo’ this ? it wasn’t doing this yesterday, before i installed avast free security; i don’t know if avast has anything to do with this, i had avg free before; thanks
outlook express 6 has facility of storing email address directly to the contact / address book but now i am using Microsoft outlook 2007 where i am not able to identify this facility if you can help in finding out how to store automatically when i send any email the email id to Contact / address book
waiting for your reply
thanks
Have you looked at the emails search script at http://www.biterscripting.com/SS_FindEmailStrs.html ? I find it very useful to
– find lost email addresses
– search email content
– list emails from/to a particular contact
etc.
It guess it is especially useful for sales people to mine/extract data that is already on your computer stored as emails. I have been doing other things with biterscripting too. I find it very flexible.
1. Download biter from http://www.biterscripting.com/install.html . It is free.
2. Start biterscripting.
3. Install all sample scripts using the command
script “http://www.biterscripting.com/Download/SS_AllSamples.txt”
4. Search emails with the command
script SS_FindEmailStrs.txt storagedir(“email storage folder”) files(“*.eml”) search_strings(“ravi+proposal+December”)
Above is an example. It will list all emails from “ravi” with subject “proposal” with content that contains the word “December”. Use the correct email storage folder in place of “email storage folder” .
Sojwita
I have a problem with my Outlook Express. When I send out e-mails to multiple addresses, each person on the receiving end receives the same e-mail from me over and over again numerous times. What can I do to fix this?
Thanks.
I recently got a new computer. I noticed that on Microsoft Office is not automatically saving the e-mail adresses I have previously sent to. If I go a week or two without sending to a particular e-mail address, the auto complete does not recognize it and in some instances, their e-mail address is not even in the drop down menu.
Is there a way to fix this?
I tried to Export my Yahoo address book and it saved to a csv file but when it imported into Outlook and Outlook Express, it lost the email address. So should I delete all unused columns?
Outlook will compacts your messages automaticly I believe as a .bak file. Is there anyway to get at these old massages maybe one or two years ago, and how long are they saved? I assume they are on the C drive some where.
Thanks
Help!
I used your & Microsofts own directions to create a Personal Address Book in Outlook, which I was supposed to then be able to import via a Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book into Outlook Express, the problem is I can do everything req’d to get a this ready, but in my OE there is no Import choice for Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book, or any version of Outlook either. Any suggestions?
…somehow when our tech support upgraded me to Office 2003, on opening, my OE address book all moved over to Outlook (which I was NOT USING prior &do not wish to use), and I cannot get it back.
After I have composed a letter and I go to “Envelopes and Lables” to print a contact info on my envelope–I can not bring up the contact info to apply it to my envelope. I have tried all I have know, to no avail. Got any suggestions?
how do i import a csv file (containing email addresses ) into a group in MS Outlook
I only want to spend about a hundred bucks….i need information where i can buy a software package (database) where i can import a foxpro database on my floppy to this database so i can do counts. Thank you in advance
I WANT TO CONNECT MY LG-T5100 PHONE TO MY PC SO THAT I CAN BE ABLE TO TRANSFER DATA AND USE INTERNET WHICH IS PROVIDED BY OUR MOBILE SERVICE PROVIDER. I HAVE INSTALLED THE USB DATA CABLE SOFTWARE, BUT IT IS NOT CONNECTING WITH THE PHONE. WHEN I TRY TO INSTALL THE USB DRIVE, THE PC GIVES ME A FEEFBACK, SAYING THE SOFTWARE IS NOT DIGITALLY SIGNED BY MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP LOGO AND SO, IT HAS FAILED THE TEST AND CANNOT BE INSTALLED.
WOULD YOU, PLEASE, HELP ME TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM BY SENDING ME THE USB DRIVER THAT HAS PASSED THE MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP LOGO TEST?
PLEASE, RESPOND BY USING THIS E-MAIL ADDRESS: shelterfororphans2005@yahoo.com
I have 2 questions regarding Outlook Express.
I created a signature–but I can’t see any way to choose a font, color, etc. so I have to do this individually every time I send an email…which leads to my 2nd question….
How do I ensure that the font, colors, etc that I used when I wrote my email is the way it comes through to the person I send it to?
I am very frustrated that I spend the time to choose these things and I get a reply and my original looks totally defaulted to something boring which is apparently the way it showed up to the recipient!
Thank you!!!
In all the advice given above there is stilll no help given to saving Outlook Express emails to disk,i.e, CD-R ,DVD. It is quite easy to save them to disk with advice given by a reader some time ago,but unfortunately I did not keep a record of this advice,and am now looking again for it.
I have just switched to DSL provided by Embarq, and have several email problems, but the one I’m concerned about now is….how can I save emails that I have received? I formerly had a list of folders that I could move messages to….don’t see that here.
Hmmm…90% of what I just posted got wiped…trying again…
I downloaded a piece of software called PowerIE which is v. small less than 5MB.
It’s a little gem. I was able to cleanly backup Outlook Express email+
addressbook+other junk in a single click.
AND I’ve verified I can restore any part of it into Outlook Express!
Cool. I think this is exactly what you want.
The link to download PowerIE (free of course !!) is:
http://www.technicland.com/powerie6.php3
To save, open PowerIC, select Outlook Express backup, select email user, give a name to the backup directory, keep the defaults (save messages, address book, signatures, etc) and click save.
To restore use File-Import in Outlook Express, browse for the backup file, select the parts to restore, click OK and you’re done.
All your message sub-folders will be saved separately and all or just certain ones can be restored. As for address book importing a saved one adds to previous list (seems to overwrite existing addresses of same name since OE didn’t ask anything about overwriting, but … thats fine for me).
Peter From France
I upgraded windows outlook express, now I can’t change my fonts or open sites from opened emails.
any suggestions as to why?
I’m getting mail at my hotmail inbox but the pictures either don’t come though or they are at the bottom of the page not where the text is can you help?
can you help me on this? ok well my document xox6damien6xox wont open, it said my ram is full, but then i deleted all my documents ecept that one and it still wont work. can you please tell me how to get it back because it was really importaint to me and i cryed for hours when i lost it so please let me have it back or atleast tell me how i cant get all the wrighting back on the screen to atleast read it once again.
The pointer above
“this Earthlink support document”
http://support.earthlink.net/mu/1/psc/img/walkthroughs/windows_9x_nt/email/outlook_2000/0445.6av.exportabook.psc.html
is no longer valid.
Additionally, references to Microsoft support of vCard should indicate that most data is lost when exporting an address book entry to a vCard file. This tends to make vCard a poor option for saving or exchanging data. If anyone has better information, it would be appreciated.
pls give me step-by-step option to export microsoft
outlook mail and address book backup.
I have formatted my hard disk. I backed up every thing but forget to back up address book. All the addresses are in sent folder which i saved. Is there any way to add them directly to address book?
When I backup clients address books, I export it as a comma separated text file and make sure that all the boxes for first name, last name, full name, etc are checked and it always has come over just fine.
Transferring email messages from Outlook Express can be tricky – the easiest and best way I can find is to export it to Outlook and save it as a Personal Folder File (*.pst).
I haven’t tried E-backup but it sounds great.
I just use a program called “E-Backup” (Inachis). This program backs up ALL the parts of I.E. (passwords, favorites, addressbook, everything). Default b/u folder is “My Documents”. Copy the data file to other media. Install the program onto the new system, put the file into the new “My Documents”, and restore the data file. I use this whenever I upgrade a new system.
You should not be mixing portability with recovery they are not necessarily the same thing.
For recovery and that was the purpose of the article. The file that should be backed up is the Windows Address Book (*.wab). If you have more than one back them all up at least until you figure out which is the one you need/use (the one most recently changed).
If you want to mess with exporting, changing data, and importing your address book, fine, but if you mess up you want to restore your *.wab file.
You may not notice in your Export that you may only be exporting the main address entries and not the shared address entries. The WAB contains both.
When you have a backup and a destoyed address book, you have nothing to lose, you WILL get it right and you have the means to do it. When you have an exported copy and try to restore it to see if it works you are playing with fire, because you could destroy what you have. You must save your actual Windows Address Book before experimenting.
If you upgrade to a more recent system, you can generally use your old WAB and it will be upgraded. If that doesn’t work you can try exporting on old system and importing on new system. When restoring to same system you have absolutely no problem restoring your WAB to the location it is currently being called from — which should be same location it was when you backed it up.
The main thing is to have your data. You will figure out how to restore it when you need it. When you need it and have a backup you are in a very good position — you have nothing to lose.
You should always keep your personal data separate from system directories, so that you can back them up easily.