 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussionsAccessExcelInfoPathOutlookPowerPointPublisherWordDirectoryUser Groups Related Topics Outlook ExpressInternet ExplorerWindowsMS Server ProductsMore Topics ... |
MS Office Forum / Outlook / Contacts / November 2007How do I merge multiple contact identities
I have recently installed a new HDD on my desktop and installed Windows XP Pro afresh and all applications, including office. I used the FAST wzard to transfer my data. I am now running Outlook 2003. All my contacts are there, but more that I expected! I now have, for some reason, contacts, contacts (2), contacts (3), main identity's contacts, contacts backup, export and shared contacts. Seven contact folders, in all. Some have the same number as others, but not all. I now have nearly 4000 separate contact entries. Obviously de-duplicating them would be quicker if I can merge all of these into one identity. Can anyone, please, tell me how I can do this? When I right click on one identity and try and move the contacts, no action seems to be taken. Help would be much appreciated as I really don't want to trawl though all the contacts if I can help it. Many thanks in advance. Your post is very confusing. I doubt you are using Outlook 2003. Outlook does not even use the term identities or shared Contacts. Are you sure you aren't talking about Outlook Express? If so, you're in the wrong group. This is a group to support Outlook from the Office group of programs. Outlook Express is a part of Internet Explorer and is a quite different program despite its similar name.. You will probably get a faster and more expert answer if you post this to an outlook express news group. Try posting in one of these newsgroups: microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie5.outlookexpress for OE 5.x microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie55.outlookexpress for OE 5.5x microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress for OE 6.x A good website for information on OE is: http://www.tomsterdam.com/  SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] >I have recently installed a new HDD on my desktop and installed Windows XP > Pro afresh and all applications, including office. I used the FAST wzard [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > > Many thanks in advance. > Your post is very confusing. > I doubt you are using Outlook 2003. Outlook does not even use the term [quoted text clipped - 39 lines] > > > > Russ, I am absolutely sure that I am using Microsoft Outlook 2003 SP2 ! "Part of Microsoft Office Professional 2003". I have only just installed it! To repeat, under contacts, when I click on the button on the left hand side, down at the bottom (recognise Outlook 2003?) and the contact page comes up, in the top left hand side of the page, under contacts, I have seven separate folders. I have listed above their exact titles, one of which is called "Main Identity's Contacts" I didn't name any of these; they arrivee in this form after I used the FAST wizard to transfer my Documents & Settings. One is clearly a duplicate and actually says "Backup" but the others are all similar, but subtly different, so I need to merge them all and then look for duplicates. All I want to know is if anyone can tell me how to merge the folders, please. Thank you. Convince me. Post your version number (Help | About) State how you configured your Outlook profile. FAST would only work if you were using Outlook 2003 on your previous version. Were you? You appear to have Outlook Express data imported into Outlook. SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > >> Your post is very confusing. [quoted text clipped - 74 lines] > > Thank you. Russ, OK. Version number 11.8010.6568. Yes, on my previous HDD I was running Outlook Express as my main PIM, in the past. I was running Office 2000. Outlook 2000 had mail and contacts from a previous F.A.S.T. transfer from a laptop, which related to a previous job that I had but was used only to retrieve the odd address. I exported all Outlook Express mail and contacts to Outlook 2000 sometime ago, though and had been running the latter only as my PIM well before the set up of my new HDD. Your right that the F.A.S.T. wizard did not take all the data into Outlook 2003. All other Office data transferred perfectly, but I had to save the data file to a backup disk and import it to Outlook 2003. All mail arrived perfectly intact, as did my contacts, but now separated into these different folders. I understand why the different origins of this contact data means that Outlook may regards them as being separate, but all I want to do is put them all into one folder so that I can review them and delete duplicates. Thank you, in advance. > Convince me. > Post your version number (Help | About) [quoted text clipped - 80 lines] > > > > Thank you. That explains it. I bet you were running IMO mode of Outlook 2000, which actually used the WAB and shared data with OE. That's why you could end up OE's labels on your folders. We need to understand the origin of these folders before so we can figure out how to deal with them. Did some of these extra folders appear after your import or were they there before? Is your root Contact Folder named "Contacts?" If you are satisfied that these folders are valid Outlook Contact Folders and that each contains separate data, I would just copy the contents of one into another then run a duplicate checker: http://www.slipstick.com/addins/contacts.htm#dupes SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > Russ, > [quoted text clipped - 120 lines] >> > >> > Thank you. Thanks, Russ. Ok, to clarify: My root folder is, as you say, Contacts. The subfolders are Contacts (2), Contacts (3) and Export. I can see this when I right click and try to copy the entries into the root folder (which seems to have no effect) However, on the main Outlook screen, having clicked on the contacts button, I now have 6 folders, in the following order: Contacts, Contacts (2), Contacts (3), Main Identity's Contacts, Contacts Backup and Export. I deleted the Shared Contacts folder as it had only one entry and I confirmed that it did, indeed, appear in the root folder. I use Plaxo Premium and this has a duplicate checker, but does not work across folders. I have, though, checked within all the folders and got my list down from nearly 4,000 to 1,650. I reckon that I have about half of these as genuine single entries. I haven't yet purchased one of your reccomended apps, though I see that some do work across folders. So, I can delete folders OK, but don't seem to be able to merge two of them by moving or copying them. I have never had any conflicts with Plaxo in the past so am not sure why this action won't work. Is the only way to de-dup with one of your reccomended apps and then simply delete the redundant folders? Many thanks for your help. Hopefully, this will help others too. Outlook 2003 is a vast improvement on both Outlook 2000 and Outlook Express for running one's business, bit I guess that I am paying for having roughly amalgamated databases over a very long period of time. Now is the time to get it right, once and for all. Regards > That explains it. I bet you were running IMO mode of Outlook 2000, which > actually used the WAB and shared data with OE. That's why you could end up [quoted text clipped - 131 lines] > >> > > >> > Thank you. It looks like you must have run multiple import processes to create all these Contact Folders. FAST would not do this, but installing Outlook with the option to migrate from OE sure would. So would importing manually from OE. If these subfolders truly contain unique information that does not appear in your root folder, then I would move the data to your roor folder and use the third party duplicate checkers. They are far more reliable than Outlook's native utility, especially since some of these Contacts are probably not resolved in the Outlook Address Book Service. SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > Thanks, Russ. > [quoted text clipped - 199 lines] >> >> > >> >> > Thank you. OK, Russ. Thanks. As I said, I seem to have a lot of baggage from different sytems to clean up. I will check out the external dup checkers and get one that operates over multiple folders, move the unique survivors into the root contacts folders and delete the empty shell folders (as I can't seem to move them to the root folder before checking for duplicates). Thanks again for all your help and the useful links. Best regards > It looks like you must have run multiple import processes to create all > these Contact Folders. FAST would not do this, but installing Outlook with [quoted text clipped - 207 lines] > >> >> > > >> >> > Thank you. Try IMI Contacts Exporter http://www.imibo.com/imidev/Exchange/imice.htm It is free for first 100 contacts > What am I changing or removing? I get translator error message too. Today, > I [quoted text clipped - 36 lines] > >> > > error > >> > > message. Any ideas? |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.