Microsoft Outlook Contacts "how to" question

[ctmom05]

The family organization that I work for is without adequate admin or tech support right now, so I have a question that I want to throw out here.

Is it possible to merge contacts from one person's computer with another in an efficient way? Each person has about 2,000 entries and there is likely to be lots of overlap between each of the 2 contact lists.

 

[trinityroyal]

There are a couple of different ways to do this. It's been a few years since I've used Outlook for anything, but I remember something about exporting a file, and something else about setting up shared contacts or a Global Address List using Microsoft Exchange.

One question...does your organization have any sort of network set up, or does each computer run independently. That will likely determine the easiest way.

I'm going to go and ask husband (The Network Architect)

Hope to have a useful answer shortly.

Trinity

 

[trinityroyal]

Ctmom, husband just gave me the instructions. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Export the Contacts file.
1) In Outlook, select File > Export.
Outlook will prompt you to create a .pst file.
2) Name the file something easy to recognize, such as Joe_outlook.pst.
3) Save the .pst file to a USB memory stick.
If your company has a network, you can save the file on a shared drive.

Step 2: Import the file
1) In Outlook, select File > Import.
2) Select the exported file.
Outlook gives you a few options such as "allow duplicates"
3) Select the appropriate option, and import the file.

If each person exports their own outlook.pst file, and imports the other person's, then you should end up with 2 complete sets of contacts.

Hope this helps.

Trinity

 

[Marcie Mac]

Well this is a saver for sure - I am sooo Outlook challanged when it comes to doing stuff between two computers, well, three actually.

My one at the office connects to the one I have in our office up North so I can pull my email - but the one I have at home, I have to connect to my one up North via a web address and it pulls no contact information so I find myself paging thru emails trying to find something that person has sent so I can cut and paste.

Maybe if I can find some time later I can play with the Export button

Thanks for the useful info...

Marcie