How do I add my contacts to window 8

myusernamehasgone_2

I have used outlook for many years and have all my contacts in it, my new laptop has windows 8 and a people tab. How do I get all my contacts in to people?

Jivesinger

Are you using Windows 8 with a Microsoft Account?

myusernamehasgone_2

Yes I have a Microsoft account

Jivesinger

In that case, the simplistic answer is that you can:

a) export the contacts as a CSV from Outlook, and then
b) login to the Outlook.com website (not Outlook on your PC* and not on the Windows 8 People application) with your Microsoft account and
c) within the list of options on Outlook.com to "Add people to your contact list" there should be an "Import from File" option, which you can use.
d) next time Windows 8 synchronises it should work.
e) you can also export the data back out from Outlook.com to check it.

However.... when I tried to do it I found that only certain fields in the Outlook export were recognised by Outlook.com, so it would lose some data. I had to faff around (this is a technical term ) with the CSV data in Excel to move data into the right fields before trying to load it.

For instance Outlook exports a field called "Primary Phone" number but this wasn't loaded into Outlook.com, even though Outlook.com's own export also includes the very same field.

It may be that Outlook.com has improved in this respect, or you have a better version of Outlook than I do, but I strongly recommend trying to load just a couple of contacts first before you try and load the whole lot.

Good luck!


*Why, oh why, do Microsoft now use the same name for their software application and their completely different webmail service?

myusernamehasgone_2

Thank you I will give that a go tonight and post back how I got on hopefully all will go well as I am not up to faffing around!