Importing previous Contact details to new form

[Wee Bonnie Edinburgh Prob... :\)]

Hi all,

Please let me know if you can help with the following:

Due to my company wanting their own version of the
contact form, I have duly created one that includes
various specific fields, a timestamp function for notes,
etc.

I have also now set Outlook to default to this Custom
form instead of the standard Contact form when creating a
new contact, but there now remains the issue of migrating
all previous contacts & their details from the old to the
new type.

In turn, I duly exported all contact details to a .csv
but when I try to import them into the new form, it
simply defaults to the old style... ?!

Am I doing something wrong? Or is it impossible to bring
across old contact details to a new form?

Thanks in advance,


SD

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

You need to change the MessageClass on the existing items to point to your
new form's class. See
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/newdefaultform.htm#convert for several tools
and scripts to accomplish this easily.

 

[Hollis D. Paul]

In turn, I duly exported all contact details to a .csv
but when I try to import them into the new form, it
simply defaults to the old style... ?!

Am I doing something wrong? Or is it impossible to bring
across old contact details to a new form?

Thanks in advance,

If you actually used the export wizard, then you should see that you do
not have the custom fields in the output. The outlook import/export
wizards are really minimal, in comparison to the ones in Access,

It isn't really necessary to export/import the contacts just to change
the form that is being used to display the data items. All that has to
be done is change the MessageClass field to the name of the new form.
There is a utility in the ORK that will open each item and change the
MessageClass field and save the item again. See the following pages:
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/code/convertfields.htm
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/newdefaultform.htm


Hollis D. Paul [MVP - Outlook]
(e-mail address removed)
Using Virtual Access 4.52 build 277 (32-bit), Windows 2000 build 2195
http://search.support.microsoft.com/kb/c.asp?FR=0&SD=TECH&LN=EN-US

Mukilteo, WA USA