How To: Move your contacts from outlook PC to Live Hotmail, ready for your WP7

I’ve seen a few posts around the interweb from people regarding the lack of synchronisation between WP7 and desktop versions of outlook. The problem is people are used to plugging into their PC to sync their outlook email/calendar/contacts with their phone.  With WP7 this is no longer necessary, even if you don't have an Exchange server at home.  Everybody knows that WP7 synchs with Outlook Exchange already, right?

Full details after the jump...



So your local desktop version of Outlook has a “personal folder”. It contains inbox, calendar, etc. To synch these with WP7 they need to be in the cloud, as part of a Live account. Here is the simple way to transition the information from your hard drive to the cloud.



1) If you don’t already have one, sign up for a live/hotmail account. (www.live.com)

2) Download and install the Outlook Hotmail Connector ) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=39db2b89-af2e-41f9-a175-f93e1377959f&displaylang=en is the URL for the 32bit version)

3) Restart outlook and now you have an additional drop-down menu item, “Outlook connector”. Click and select “Add new account” and complete the details in the box the pops up.

4) NOTE: if you want to maintain your current email address, in the box that you enter your hotmail/live settings, click “advanced” and enter your usual email as the “reply to” address

5) When you click OK, Outlook will create a new account on the left pane of outlook with a new inbox/sent/deleted items etc.

6) Click on Contacts. At the top left you will see TWO contact lists now, one for your old account and one for your new hotmail/live account. Click on each – one will be full, the other empty. The full one is your old account J

7) Ctrl+A to select all your contacts. Ctrl+C to copy them then switch to the other outlook box and Ctrl+V to paste them into your new contacts list. This is the hotmail/Live contacts list and will sync with your hotmail/live account automatically (it isn’t instant it take a few mins to populate). Log in to hotmail/live via your browser, click on contacts and you will see all your contacts are now in the cloud.

8) Repeat for your calendar...only this time, select View > Current View > All appointments, to see a list of all your outlook calendar entries. Copy & Paste this list into your outlook hotmail calendar to transfer, as you did the contacts. Now your calendar is in the cloud also.



If you got this far, you’ve transitioned your information to the cloud ready to synch with your WP7. NOTE: in outlook, your hotmail account looks like personal folders, but be aware that these are stored in the cloud and on your PC...if you change PCs and reinstall outlook, entering your hotmail account details will populate all your emails/contacts/calendar back into your desktop outlook.

But if you are like me, you want to sync this information on your desktop AND the cloud AND your WP7...and probably keep your old email address as well!



Here is how to do it:



1) Sign in to hotmail/live and use the one-stop inboxing to enter details for your old email addresses. Now all your emails are delivered to your hotmail/live account BOTH in the cloud AND in your outlook hotmail folders. Any changes you make in one will be reflected in the other.

2) Go to outlook Tools>Account Settings and select the Data Files Tab. Click on your hotmail/live account data file... the filename will be “not available” because its in the cloud, right? Select it and set as default data file. Restart outlook, and all your email will deliver to this hotmail/live account on your PC now...your old email will go via hotmail.

3) If you like, you can drag/drop folders from your personal folders in the left side navigation pane into the blahblah@hotmail.com folders at the top of the navigation pane (if its default, it should be at the top now). So all your old folders/saved emails can be copied to cloud easily too. NOTE: one thing you can’t do in the cloud is have subfolders, only folders in the root.

4) Already your emails are synching from your old account with your hotmail account in the cloud and as seen on your PC (remember, the information you now see in outlook is actually stored in the cloud, not on your PC any longer! EDIT - outlook does create a local copy for working offline, in C:Users/you/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Outlook)

5) Go back to Tools > Account Settings > and select the email tab. You see your hotmail/live address and your old addresses. Remember, your old emails are now being synched via hotmail, so go ahead and delete those settings. This WON’T remove the data files, you can still access those in your navigation pane, but it means that your old email is ONLY delivered to your hotmail inbox now.

If you want to get fancy, create some folders in your hotmail called “Yahoo Inbox” or whatever, then set up outlook rules to deliver email to different folders. EDIT: In fact, options>settings in hotmail has a setting that asks if you want them delivered to a separate inbox for that multi-inboxed account.



There are two drawbacks I can see: firstly, email delivered from your old address via hotmail will have in the sender field: “Sent by me@hotmail.com on behalf of me@old-email.com”. I can live with that. Secondly, the speed at which email gets delivered from your old email account to hotmail is not as fast as delivering directly...this could be a setting in hotmail on how often to page for the new emails, I don’t know. But it can take a minute or two instead of being instant. One big upside is noticing immediately how powerful the hotmail spam filter is!



But with freely available tools and a little bit of thought you can manage your whole life in the cloud, no need for backups (ahem, remember the sidekick drama?!) and transition from your PC pretty easily.

Hope that helps.