How do I transfer Hotmail contacts to another account?

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I can't fix it. I'm not Microsoft, and I don't work for Hotmail.

You need to make that suggestion to the Microsoft, MSN and Hotmail people.

Hi Leo,

First, thank you very much for that article. It became a reference in other sites on solving the problem of exporting hotmail contacts.

Second: Have you noticed that, for some strange reason, your method and Trumba´s method (http://www.trumba.com/help/exporttips.html#Hotmail) have the same drawback?

Essencially, Trumba´s method allows people to sync their Outlook accounts with the hotmails ones, but even if they don´t have an old or premium account. Manually, you go to hotmail contacts, click on "print preview", copy, and paste to an Excell worksheet (paste special - text - if your using firefox, or just paste if using explorer). Then you can save as .csv, and your ready to import to outlook.

This process does the same thing your method does, only it´s manual and works for every hotmail account.

But what about the drawback? Well, like I was saying, for some very strange reason, when you sync the accounts (your method), lots of contacts appear only with their names, but not their e-mails.

The interesting part of the problem is, when using Trumba´s manual method, THE SAME EXACT PROBLEM happens. When you print preview the contacts, some of them appear only as names, not e-mails. And that´s not all: I tested both your method (I have an old hotmail account) and Trumba´s, and noticed the names without e-mail are the same for both methods.

That is, I still don´t understand why the print preview show only names, but this problem occurs even when using the automated method (yours), doing a sync of the accounts.

So, my question: do you know of any way of getting past this problem? I´m still working on it.

Why microsoft (and it´s products) suck, or How to solve all the problems they create to us:

I got it.

The problem is that on the contacts list all the info is displayed. When you use the print view, for no reason, a lot of info is lost.

What do to:

1. Just go to your hotmail contacts and select everything. Don´t use the print view. Important notice: if you have enough contacts (I have 333), you´ll notice some large strings for e-mails don´t show correctly. These ones will give you a bit of work on the next step.

2. Open Excell, then paste (or paste special-text: see above on using firefox). You´re almost done.

3. Cut the columns you want (like Name, e-mail, and phone fields), and cut. Open a new worksheet, paste them. Save. This is your contact list. You can discard the first worksheet (with the columns you didnt want, like the ones where you can mark).

4. Now, the catch up (or, the works): you have to check every e-mail address, to see if it´s correct. If you want to be smart, just check your hotmail contacts page, and see where there are long strings of e-mail and info. Like:

joesomebodyfatman@hotmai...

- and replace accordingly. You may want to click on the e-mail contact to see the correct e-mail address.

or

joefatsomebady@hotmail.com more

and take away the "more". Like I said, just check to see if all e-mails are ok, and you can orient yourself by seeing what e-mails don´t display right on the contacts page of hotmail.

When you click on an e-mail field, it will became active (blue). Don´t worry. And you don´t need to do it for every e-mail.

Now save as ".csv (comma delimited) . It´s over, this is your contact list.

Warning: if you tried the Leo approach for old or premium accounts (synchronation), you will have to delete your contacts list on outlook, because otherwise it will became doubled. If it happens, just delete and load.

When your importing, outlook will ask you to assign the fields (for example, will ask if "email" is "E-mail Address"). Just assign each field correctly. If you want to avoid this, alter the excell sheet to the right names, and outlook won´t need to ask you that.

Correct names for fiels (or columns): Name, E-mail Address, Home Phone. There are others, and you may want to take a look at Outlook to see the names.

Hope I helped someone. It´s been 3 days of work on this, but I nailed Microsoft dumbness.

Carlos Cavalcanti

This might be of help:

http://www.contactsimporter.net/testimport/test/index.aspx

Test it!!!

When you copy your hotmail contacts into Excel to make your .csv document make sure that you rename the 'E-mail' column 'Email'. Then both the names and email addresses will import into a new hotmail account. Simple but effective. Hope this solves your problems guys.

follow instruction:
create new identity - add your hotmail details- then TOOLS - ADDRESS BOOK - TOOLS - SYNCHRONIZE NOW - then follow instuctions - hope this helps

i try and export my contacts from hotmail by going to print view and copying, pasting in excel and then saving as a csv file. all the details are there in the print view but whn i import them to outlook express but it says that i am trying to import "non-internet email addresses" and creates a contact but without a email attached. any ideas?

You CAN export hotmail contacts using windows live mail!! Just take a good look round, I managed to do it somehow

Is it possible to retrieve a contact list from a Hotmail account in which the user cannot sign in with it? If they've lost their password and can't remember their secret answer in case of password loss?

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Nope, not that I'm aware of. Heck, that would mean ANYONE could get your
contacts, and you don't want that.

Leo

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