A customer wanted to move his email from his laptop to a new acer PC that he purchased recently.

After a few questions, I discovered that he didn’t care about his old emails, but he did want the address book moved over (he didn’t want to re-enter about 100 addresses).

This is where I have a few rants against microsoft (no I didn’t say this to the customer, but this is what goes through my mind)…

• Why does outlook have an address book AND a contact list? Its the same thing, with exactly the same information… Why call it by 2 different names and confuse the hell out of technically unsophisticated people?
• Why is it so difficult to transfer emails and address books from outlook to outlook express (and vice versa)? They should have been called two completely different names, as they operate completely differently.

Anyway to move an outlook address book to OE (in the microsoft convoluted way), you need to first run OE on the computer that has outlook (yes, I know its weird), select file -> import -> other address book… select microsoft exchange personal address book… then click import.

This will “magically” import the outlook address book into OE.

Now, from OE, you do: file -> export -> address book -> text file (comma separated values) … click export, then choose a destination (a usb drive is a good choice).

Take the USB drive to the new PC, run OE, select: file -> import -> other address book -> text file (comma separated values) -> import… then select the file you saved on the usb drive… next, then there you have it.