Mail Messages in Contacts Folder (98/2000)

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I’ve been passed a problem whereby someone has created some new folders in Outlook to enable them to organise their messages; they’ve then moved a sizable number of messages to these various folders. Unfortunately, some of these new folders have been created as Contact Items folders rather than Mail Items folders and messages have been moved into these folders over a period of time. Those in the Contact Items folder appear to be Contact items, of course.

At the moment, the contents of the original message (not sure about any attachments) still exists, but can anyone offer a method of getting these messages out of the Contact Items folder and into a normal Mail Items folder?

It doesn’t seem possible to move the messages (either by menu option or drag and drop) as all that happens is Outlook opens up a new message window with the recipient details coming from the “contact item” that was moved. Forwarding the entry just creates a new message which includes the entry as an attachment.

Any suggestions?

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That’s a nasty mess! When I create a single such Contact item, the message is embedded in the general notes section of the Contact (whatever the correct name is for that field). I can open the message and then select File, Copy to Folder, then delete the message and then delete the Contact, thus successfully saving the message to an appropriate Mail Items folder. If in your situation there are a huge number of these, you may be able to do it by VBA code, but if there is a mix of -real- (intentional) Contacts with attached messages, and accidentally created contacts with attached messages, that will be a problem.

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I too think you’d have to do this with code – and it won’t be pretty. You’ll have to loop through the folder contents and check the item type, to determine if the current one is in the wrong place.

One reason to do it this way is that the MS knowledge base documents the fact that you can lose attachments when you move an item from one type of folder to another by dragging or using the menu.

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I hope the original poster will forgive some humor at his (or her) expense, but this is one of those situations where the old joke applies:
Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this!”
Doctor: “Well, don’t do that!”

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goto http://www.slipsitck.com[/url%5D and get a utility that allows you to change the form. make a copy of the folder (incase you mess up) and run the utility – change them from IPM.Contacts to IPM.Note – then move to a mail folder.

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Thanks everyone, I shall try one or more of the various ideas you’ve given me.

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Mary’s link was meant to be http://www.slipstick.com[/url%5D, possibly this particular article, but I wasn’t able to find a utility which matches your need.

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