Export addresses from Outlook Express 1

[Mike Lewis]

My question relates to Outlook Express 6.0. I hope this is the appropriate place to post it.

Basically, I want to export the contents of my OE address book to a text file (CSV file) (so that I can then import it into another mail client).

I selected File / Export / Address Book, then selected "Text file (comma-separated values)". I chose the destination file, then continued through the export wizard. But when I click on finish, I see a message "Error exporting the Address Book" - with no further information or assistance.

I appreciate that it's difficult for others to diagnose this problem, but if anyone has any information that can help to solve it, I'd be grateful. I've checked all the obvious places such as the OE Help and the Microsoft knowledge base.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[smah]

As a first step, try exporting without using OE. You will find it in Start, All Programs, Accessories, Address Book. When exporting, use your Desktop as the export location, just to eliminate the possibility of problems with filesystem permissions, you can always move it afterward.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Smah,

Thanks for the reply. I tried your suggestion, but unfortunately got exactly the same result.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[smah]

Can you export in any format and did you ever use OE's Identities function?

 

[Mike Lewis]

Smah,

Can you export in any format

I can export to a WAB file, but the program I want to import into doesn't handle that.

Another reason I wanted a text file was to break the conversion into smaller chunks. The program I am importing into (which is Thunderbird) does not recognise OE's folders, so I though I would just import one folder at a time. That would help me manually organise things within T'bird.

and did you ever use OE's Identities function?

I don't think so. I see that I have one identity set up within OE. I have never had call to change that or to switch identities.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[smah]

Well, googling around shows others having this problem with no real solutions. One possibility is that there is a bad address entry or some form of corruption within the database. If you can export the existing adress book to another .wab file, try opening the newly exported one & exporting to .csv from that (I'm hoping that the .wab -> .wab export might clean/correct/delete any corrupt entries).

The reason that I asked about Identites, is because using OE's Identities changes the structure of the Windows Address Book somewhat.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Smah,

That did it. Well done.

I exported from OE to a WAB, then opened the WAB and exported it to a CSV. This time the export worked fine.

Interestingly, the CSV contains duplicate (and sometimes triplicate) instances of many of the addresses. It also has addresses that I had previously deleted. I think the duplicates are addresses that I have, at some time, moved from one folder to another, suggesting that the export process is still seeing the original address and the new copy.

But none of that matters. Now that I have the addresses in a CSV, I can easily manipulate them.

Many thanks for your help. It's worth a star.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[smah]

Glad it worked (mostly). Your results seem to indicate that there was some sort of corruption with the original file structure.