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Importing Outlook Contacts
 
#1
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I have Outlook on one computer and The Bat! on another. I would like to be able to import contacts from Outlook into TB and had assumed that as long as I could map to the relevant PST file I would be able to do so. Unfortunately this is not the case. TB appears to check for Outlook being installed on the local system and gives up if that is not true. Is this something I should submit as a new feature request?

Regards, John M

P.S. I tried exporting form Outlook to tab delimited and then importing to TB but ended up with gobbledygook.
 
 
 
#2
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Can Outlook export to ldif? That format is developed for this kind of things.
__________________________________
I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
#3
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Can Outlook export to ldif? That format is developed for this kind of things.
I am running Outlook 2000 and the answer in that case is NO.

TB is able to import from Outlook (I installed the TB trial to see if it would work, and it did) so if a user wants to import from Outlook and Outlook is not installed locally, why can't TB prompt the user for the location of an Outlook PST file?

Regards, John M
 
 
 
#4
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I don't know why it doesn't ask that, but could you install TB on the Outlook pc, import the contacts. Copy the resulting *.abd file to your TB system and uninstall TB from your Outlook PC. I realize this is a bit of a hassle, but I can't think of anyting else.
__________________________________
I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
#5
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I don't know why it doesn't ask that, but could you install TB on the Outlook pc, import the contacts. Copy the resulting *.abd file to your TB system and uninstall TB from your Outlook PC. I realize this is a bit of a hassle, but I can't think of anyting else.
Yes, that is what I did and it worked perfectly. The other machine is used as the primary computer in our household and its Outlook contacts are the master set that get copied to all other systems. I will need to import on a regular basis so I was hoping that there would be an easier way. I'll add a feature request.

Regards, John M
 
 
 
#6
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Further research reveals what I should already have guessed - .PST is a Microsoft proprietary format. This link has some narrative that explains...
http://www.mailnavigator.com/reading_ms_outlook_pst_files.html

The relevant piece is "The format of MS Outlook mail archives (*.pst) is protected by Microsoft. Therefore, in MailNavigator, *.pst files can be accessed only indirectly, with the help of Outlook-OLE. In effect, a search of messages in Outlook folders is achieved by Outlook's own resources."

Presumably Outlook OLE is only available when Outlook is installed.

Regards, John M
 
 
 
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