Moving Outlook Contacts

[Diggs]

Being mostly residential I don't work with Outlook that much anymore so I'm pleading ignorant on a few of the finer points. I have an appointment Monday with a very small business that wants to move to a new computer. He stated he wants me to install Office and move Outlook's Contacts. I'm not sure how knowledgeable the customer is as setting up a new install of Outlook and entering his credentials should bring in all his mail and Contacts would still need to be transferred. Not sure he knows this but then why would he just ask for just Contacts to be transferred? (I know, I need better communication with customer.) The real question I guess is does the old Outlook require export and then import into the new install in CSV format for Contacts transfer or is there a better way to do Contacts transfer from old machine to new?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Export to PST...and then import the PST. You can choose the whole mailbox...or individual components such as Calendar, or Contacts, whatever.
With Outlook..all the data is in the one PST you export...makes it so nice and portable.

Now..if he is using Office 365..(or any Exchange)...you don't have to "migrate" anything..since it's all stored in the mailbox. Outlook on the new computer will see it all.

 

[Diggs]

Export to PST...and then import the PST. You can choose the whole mailbox...or individual components such as Calendar, or Contacts, whatever.
With Outlook..all the data is in the one PST you export...makes it so nice and portable.

Now..if he is using Office 365..(or any Exchange)...you don't have to "migrate" anything..since it's all stored in the mailbox. Outlook on the new computer will see it all.

How effective is FABs with Outlook?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

How effective is FABs with Outlook?

I dunno...I never used it. Learned to do things by hand years ago and it's quick and second nature to me, so didn't get into those profile moving programs. Couple of times that I did try one (forensic) ...caused major issues with roaming profiles on that client.

Find out what type of email connect you're dealing with here...POP , or IMAP...or since you say it's a small business...hopefully hosted Exchange like Office 365 which keeps it really easy.

With POP or IMAP, you'll have to export the data to a PST...and then import on the new rig.
With Exchange..just install Outlook, type in username (email address) and password..and BAM..it's all there!

 

[britechguy]

It remains astounding to me that even today Outlook does not gracefully handle Contact and Calendar syncing for IMAP accounts.

Whether it's IMAP, Exchange, or some as yet to be invented server-side storage protocol, any modern client should be syncing email, contacts, and calendar data to the server side.

 

[Sky-Knight]

That would be because IMAP is for email, it doesn't do contacts or calendars at all. The "modern" email clients you're referring to use proprietary separate mechanisms to do the syncing of those items.

Besides, Outlook is an Exchange client, that's what it was designed to do. The larger shock is that Outlook works with POP3/IMAP at all anymore, not that it doesn't do more. Though I do expect full Google interoperability sometime in 2020... finally. Which will help this.

 

[britechguy]

And, as you note, those modern clients do those functions. I don't give a flying rats ass what they have to do "under the hood" to perform them. They perform them because they are a definitely needed function.

Microsoft is not so stupid as to believe that the majority of the Outlook user base is on Exchange, because it isn't and probably won't ever be. They need to perform those sync functions because end-users need that so that they can dump one machine for a new one, and when they install Outlook on that new one and set up their non-Exchange IMAP accounts, everything, not just e-mail messages, "automagically" reappear.

Believe me, I've done some of the hoop-jumping to get Outlook [2010 the last time I did this] doing calendar and contacts sync with Gmail. At this point in time no one should have to do that hoop-jumping.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It's a limitation of the protocols.
Outlook was designed for businesses....and Exchange first and foremost.
Supporting residential email protocols (pop/imap) was an afterthought...and quite bluntly...Outlook sucks at it....especially IMAP. I will not support Outlook on IMAP...no way. Don't do residential clients anyways.

 

[britechguy]

It's a limitation of the protocols.
Outlook was designed for businesses....and Exchange first and foremost.

Regardless of the limitations of the protocols, it can still be done, and with relative ease if it is automated.

Regardless of what Outlook was designed for, it is sold in versions that clearly target the home and small business market, none of which are likely to use Exchange, and those sales are almost certainly in the tens of millions of units of Outlook even if we're only talking Outlook 2016 and later.

I don't make excuses for Microsoft, or any other software makers, when their product for a given purpose is substandard. And Outlook is substandard when interfacing with virtually anything but Exchange. Fix it!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

it is sold in versions that clearly target the home and small business market, none of which are likely to use Exchange,

Small businesses...most of them are O365 users...especially since ~15 years ago they were primate targets of "Microsoft Small Business Server". Or GMail users in which case they use their browsers. Most home users just use their phones for their ISP hosted email..or on the computer...browsers. And for those users...Microsoft always had their basic email client built into Windows...from Outlook Express back in Win9X days, to the current Windows 10 Mail.

% of Outlook used in businesses versus home...very high % of it on the biz side.

 

[Diggs]

Microsoft always had their basic email client built into Windows...from Outlook Express back in Win9X days, to the current Windows 10 Mail.

...and Windows 10 email is basically brain dead. It does not play well with others and it can only do an import of contacts in messy CSV if at all. Why it doesn't do vCard I don't understand. You'd think after all this time they'd do a bit more than offering one of the worst email clients ever.

 

[Sky-Knight]

That's because they don't want to make an email client at all. Don't you all understand? The new way of doing this is cloud everything. You can use Gmail as a website, or Outlook.com as a website. The only thing on the desktop is a little notification app if anything.

Outlook itself is considered "wrong" because it doesn't give you the single pane of interaction the web app provides. Not to mention doesn't serve the mobile market segment that's actually growing, while PC's shrink.

To be clear, I'm not actually supporting this line of logic, I'm just explaining how a publicly traded corporation makes decisions. It's all about adoption numbers, and anything on the "desktop" is essentially dead to these people. They cannot fathom why you wouldn't just use the website. You have your cell phone for notifications and junk now.

So I expect Outlook to get Google support, because O365 can service a marginal population that runs Google Apps. But do not expect anything more, because there's no money in fixing "home" users. They have their freebie junk solutions, monetized and spied on... gmail.com and outlook.com.

 

[britechguy]

That's because they don't want to make an email client at all.

Then the simple, and honest approach is: DON'T.

If you're going to do something, then do it right. If you don't want to do it, then don't.

Whether we're talking about an individual, or a corporation, a very great many of the world's problems stem from the inability to say, "I would prefer not to," and then stick to what that means.

Microsoft, based on all history, has never been particularly "customer focused." If they decide they want to do something they do it and vice versa, and everyone is supposed to get used to it. This is one of the reasons I actually tire of the whining that goes on, sometimes for decades (e.g., complaints about the ribbon interface), about things that are faits accompli and that will never be going away (or at least not going back to what came before). Better to expend energy learning how to use what's available than mourning that which is dead and gone and never coming back. The same principle applies to automobiles, home and office electronics/appliances, etc., etc., etc. Nothing is so constant as change, and conforming oneself to what's available make living, and one's emotional health, so much better.

[By the way, none of the above means that customers should not express, loudly, their displeasure at things in a timely manner. Had that occurred in sufficient numbers when Microsoft created the forced wedding between Cortana and Bing, way back when, Cortana would likely have continued to be built to interface with the web search engine of the user's choosing. But it didn't, and complaining about it now is useless.]

 

[Sky-Knight]

All of that is why I'm actually happy about the whole SaaS revolution. When you're paying a subscription, as a customer you have a voice. And Microsoft is reacting to that voice, quite rapidly I might add. Just a few years ago I would have assumed Outlook getting GMail support would be a pipe dream... yet it's an announced feature today. It's changing all sorts of norms with them. They're also setting a level of service that I consider to be the standard of SaaS offerings... that is to say, if you don't bolt on as many new features and react to user's voices the way Microsoft does with O365, I'm going to say your offering is crap and find a way to eliminate it.

Which is why I actively remove everything with Cisco, Meraki, soon to be OpenDNS, Adobe, and Autodesk's names on it. The value prop just isn't there, and it doesn't take much to show people that reality.

Not saying it's perfect... but it is what it is. Internally Microsoft rewards new features better than bug fixing and improvement of old ones... that's a long standing mess on their part that causes much of this.