Importing contacts from Microsoft Outlook

You import Microsoft Outlook contacts by first exporting them from Outlook as a comma separated value (CSV) file. A CSV file is a simple ASCII text file that has one record per line and has a .csv file extension, such as contactname.csv.

Before you begin

You can import personal contacts only. You cannot import personal groups.

Procedure

  1. Click Contacts icon.
  2. Click More > Import Contacts.
  3. In the Import Contacts dialog box, follow the instructions for exporting contacts as a CSV file.
  4. Click Browse, select the CSV file you exported contacts to, and click OK.
  5. For File language, the language selected by default is the current browser language. To change the default, select another language.
  6. For Character set, the Default is the character set appropriate to the file language. You can select another character set.

Results

The contacts in the CSV file are imported into your contacts, and then the status of the import displays. Duplicate names are not imported a second time. Duplicate names are names that have both the same email address and name as an existing contact.

When importing CSV files that contain a large number of contacts, you might get the error message, Failed to import contacts. If this happens, you should check the imported contact information. In most cases all of the contacts are imported successfully.

When you import from another source, some of the fields or the information in fields may not map exactly to fields in your web client contacts. By default, unmapped information is stored in the Comments field of the new contact record.