Friday 22 August 2014

Outlook 2013 empty address book after contacts csv import

Found an unusual problem with outlook 2013.

I had to export contacts from windows live mail in a csv file (comma seperated values).
After importing to outlook 2013 contacts (people folder) the address book was empty.

Tried all suggested methods out there including creating a new profile etc
Also tried using contacts as address book was ticked, still no joy.

Phoned microsoft and found out that importing csv in 64bit outlook on windows 7 will not work only in windows 8, so downloaded 32 bit version of outlook 2013.

Then after the import still no email addresses had gone over to contacts.

So redid it and had to map custom fields

Making sure by dragging from left hand side to right hand side of custom fields box that, name goes to name, first name to first name, middle name to middle name, last name to last name and email address to email address, all then works fine and the contacts now populates with email addresses.

I suspect that Microsoft have change field mapping for csv files in outlook 2013 so that it no longer matches the colums/fields of older csv exports.

Please make sure that when you export contacts as a csv file that you tick first name middle name and last name if you use all these fileds so that you can match them on your import.

Hope this helps somebody, wasted hours on this.