Converting Sidekick 1998 address book to Outlook 2003 contacts

[drshrinkwrap]

Sidekick is the BEST. Belatedly, I'm throwing in the towel and trying to convert my Sidekick 98 contacts to Outlook 2003. I know MS supported the conversion of Sidekick to earlier versions of Outlook, but Outlook 2003 (sadly) no longer mentions the import of Sidekick data. Any tips out there??

I'm desperate as years ago I customized the Sidekick card fields in a unique way, and use some Sidekick contact files to hold "jobs" (while keeping others in the more traditional way to hold phone contacts). These "job" files have the whole history of my business on them! Help.

 

[james33]

Dear drshrinkwrap,
The best method is to convert them (the customized ones)
ie Export them to a Tab Delimited.txt file

Then import them into Access and specify in the import advanced dialog that they are Memo fields.

then you have to make a decision as to what you do next.

Let me know how you get on...
See the FAQ pages for more ideas on Exporting.

Or

http://siderealb0x.250free.com/

Regards
Jim

 

[drshrinkwrap]

Thanks so much for replying.

I'm a little confused. Are you suggesting I keep the old customized Sidekick data in Access instead of Outlook? I've wondered before if Outlook maybe isn't the most suitable software to track "jobs" but I know nothing about Access...

I just want to find some good job tracking software that won't be unsupported in a few years (that's why I'm trying to work w/ MS - I'm assuming they are going to continue swallow everyone else up!)

One thing that is critical for me is to be able to print out all the information (my personal notes, and my phone calls) on one page as I easily did w/ Sidekick. In Sidekick I could keep all the info I needed on a case in the Card Log (which cleverly dated and timed each entry).

To do the same in Outlook would I just have to enter all information in the "large text box?" (which as far as I can tell, doesn't time and date entries)? The way I see Outlook (as a rank beginner) is that you can only view each "Outlook item" (e.g. journal entry/phone call) is by clicking on it. I don't know how to get to a view where you see ALL your various Outlook items on one page. Of course this is an Outlook question, not a Sidekick one... if this is inappropriate question to ask, could you direct me to forum for Outlook questions? Thanks again.