Unfortunately I can't replicate all of your scenario (currently lacking Word
2007), but...
a. you are likely to have problems if you have any double-quote characters
(") in any of the data you are exporting. You /might/ have difficulty with
long or multiline data but in the simple tests I have been able to do, it
works OK.
b. you may have to enable the facility in Word 2007 that lets you choose
exactly how to connect to the data
c. even that may not be enough...
So...
a. If you haven't found the export facility in Windows Mail,
- select the contacts you want to export
- look at the right-hand end of the menu at the top of the window for a
chevron like >> - click on that and you should find the Export option
- use the .csv format (I'm pretty sure that Word has no way of working
with a set of .vcf files directly)
- specify an output file in a folder near the top of your folder
hiearchy (this may not be necessary but I'm playing safe here)
b. Windows Mail exports to a .csv file using Unicode UTF-8 encoding. This
is a difference from the old Outlook Express export, and it /may/ make a
difference to the readability of the file in Word. If you have any commas in
your data, Mail correctly wraps the affected fields in a pair of
double-quote characters. However, if you have any double-quote characters,
Mail does not double them up as it really should, so Word (and most other
software that reads .csv files) will interpret a " in the data as an "end of
field" mark, and will have difficulty dealing with the data after that.
c. As far as I know, Windows Mail always exports all your contacts, even if
you only select 1. So problems with the data in any of your contacts may
affect the outcome.
If you couldn't find the Export feature, maybe that will be enough.
Otherwise, something must be going wrong when you're trying to use the
exported data, so...
a. what exactly is going wrong?
b. do you see any of the following dialog boxes:
- a dialog box that asks you to specify the character encoding of the
data (it has a drop-down at the top right with a list of encoding types)? If
so, ensure you select Unicode UTF-8
- a dialog box with a list of "field delimiters" and "record
delimiters"? If so, ensure you select comma and Enter (I think)
- a dialog box with a shortlist of delimiters (tab, comma, other) - pick
"comma" and you'll probably have to do so again.
c. or does the connection simply fail with no error message?
A few things I would try if you're not getting anywhere:
a. fix any problems with double-quotes. If necessary, open the .csv in
Notepad and either manually double-up double quotes /in the data/, or remove
them, or remove the record that contains them
b. only export the fields you need
c. try either exporting a file with a .txt extension or if Mail insists on
using .csv at the end, rename the file to .txt before trying to open it in
Word
d. try Microsoft checking Office Button|Word
Options|Advanced|General|"Confirm File format conversion
upon open" then go through the process of opening your data source again.
Try each of the options presented in the additional dialog box. If you are
only presented witth two choices (OLE DB and ODBC), check the box in that
dialog and try the Text converter option (it should be presented if you use
..txt rather than .csv)
e. if you have Excel or Access, try importing the .csv/.txt into a
worksheet or table and use that as your data source
Peter Jamieson
