In Phone List view of the Contacts folder, you can use the field chooser
(on Advance Toolbar) and make and display all of the new fields.

 The Contacts folder will look like a spreadsheet table.

 Then use the Import wizard to import from Excel.

 If you want to add the new fields to the Contact form, check out the form
newsgroup as there will be instructions there. Or www.slipstick.com

 Judy Gleeson [MVP Outlook]
 Acorn Training and Consulting
 www.acorntraining.com.au

 Everyone - turn on your Advanced Toolbars and learn how to use the Field
Chooser and Group by Box!!

 >I have a client who has a spreadsheet of about 4000 contacts with the
 > columns mostly of the usual data: name, biz phone number, email addy,
 > etc. But for each contact (spreadsheet row), there is is also about 18
 > custom fields (columns), such as square footage, expiration date, etc.
 >
 > The problem is importing this xls spreadsheet of contacts into Outlook:
 > how to get all the custom fields to show up. I know I can custom map
 > about four user defined fields per contact during the import process.
 > But as mentioned before, there are about 18 such fields.
 >
 > Can someone point me to a reference that will allow me to do this
 > easily? Or is this the province of Outlook programmers? Or ???
 >
 > Thanks in advance, much appreciated.
 >

Outlook doesn't support importing to custom fields. You'd have to write custom code or use a third-party application. See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/customimport.htm.