Unifying Adress Books (OL97 & OL2000)

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I’ve brought home a PAB file which contains all the info of the Address Book I use at work (Outlook 97). At home I’m using Outlook 2000 and have a personal Address Book. There are two things I need to ask:

1. By the time I started posting I assumed my personal Address Book in Oulook 2000 would also be stored in a PAB file, but I searched both of my HD drives and only got the PAB I brought home. Where are Address Books stored in Outlook 2000?
2. The real reason for my posting: I’d like to unify both Address Books, choosing from the PAB file I brought home the information I need and storing it onto my personal PAB? file at home. How should I go about it? I’m totally clueless.

Thank you very much

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In Outlook 2000/2002, the address book is stored in the PST file with all of your mail and other data. You should be able to import a PAB from the source file by clicking on File – Import and Export. You may need to install the converter, but you’ll be prompted if it’s required.

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Thanks Mark!!

So if OL2000 handles the Address Book within a PST, that’s why every time you add a contact to the Address Book, a corresponding entry in the Contacts folder is created, right? I don’t remember this happening in OL97. It now makes sense.

If this is true, when I import the PAB file (File | Import and Export | Import | Personal Distribution List), a plethora of new entries will be created in my Contacts folder. If so, I’d first move all my current contacts to a provisory folder to know which belong to the imported PAB and which were my former Contacts/Address Book entries. Then I’d compare the information if duplicate contacts appear, select which to keep, delete the other. Is this how I should do it?

Thank you very much

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I don’t have Office 2000 installed to check, given Leif’s post – but yes, if you import, you will have duplicates. I would not like to provide erroneous information, however, so it may behoove you to wait until someone with OL2000 can check and ensure that I am correct. I do know that when I used OL2000 as my “daily driver” that all of my contacts were stored in the PST file, as they are in OLXP.

As far as the duplicate checking, unless there are hundreds of entries, I always find it easier to import into the existing address book, sort by name, and then wipe out any second (or possibly even third) entries that match. I think that may be the long way around, but hey! It works!

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Am I getting mixed up? I agree Contacts are stored in the .pst, but the Personal Address Book is in its own .pab….

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Diegol, Leif and Mark are getting you on track, but let me clarify a couple of things (which you may already know, forgive any redundancy); Contacts and PAB are two different things, indeed they in separate files. Contacts are part of a PST, but a PAB is a separate file. You can use a Contacts folder AS A SOURCE of addresses, but it doesn’t transform into a PAB; think of the two of them as separate address lists services.

To use Contacts as a source of addresses, right click the contacts folder(s) select Properties | Outlook Address Book, and check the “Show this folder as an E-MailAddress Book”. You may have already done this.

Now click the Outlook Icon for e-mail address books, and when the address book comes up, from it’s menu select Tools | Options. Up pops the Addressing Dialog, where you can Add and Delete the available address services, and make certain adjustments. See mine, attached, in the process of adding Contacts.as an address service. There are a whole bunch of address lists available in my corporate environment.

So you see Contacts and a PAB, if available as services, are separate things.

And, to be precise: “every time you add a contact to the Address Book, a corresponding entry in the Contacts folder is created” – that’s not correct; it’s only in the PAB, and conversely if you add a contact with an e-mail address to the Contacts Folder, it only shows as an address if you have set up contacts as an address service.

I hope this helps rather than confuses.

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Wow, things got REALLY messy… just kidding

Leif:
Are you also using OL2000? I thought the same way you do before finding out that there were no PABs in my PC, even though I did have an Address Book running. And just to make things clearer : the ‘Address Book’, as it’s called in OL2000, was called ‘Personal Distribution List’ in OL97. At least that’s my case.
In OL97, the Personal Distribution List was saved to a PAB file (Mailbox.pab was the standard name for it). As far as I see, unless there’s a setting somewhere that lets one switch modes, OL2000 stores the Address Book altogether with mails, contacts & stuff in a PST file, as Mark said.
I had noted some time ago that some entries containing little information appeared in my default Contacts folder, when they should have been (I would have put them) in another Contacts folder. When I moved them to the correct folder, I saw there was an entry already, way more complete. What was happening is that:
a) I had created an entry in my Address Book some time before.
The entry generated a corresponding entry in my Contacts folder (the one with little information, eg e-mail).
c) If after moving this entry to what I thought was the correct folder I opened the Address Book, the entry would not be there.
It’s kinda the way it behaves (again, at least in my case).

Mark:
Regarding duplicates, yes, there’s always the possibility to do this kind of check. Problem is, if information between duplicate contacts had differed (eg telephone numbers), in many cases I wouldn’t have known which to keep, as many I call while at home, many others while at work. So by keeping them in separate folders I know which belongs to where and I can finally do a manual check.

John:
As I said above, in my case OL2000 behaves exactly as Mark described. Furthermore, my Address Book doesn’t quite look like yours… It doesn’t even have an Options submenu inside the Tools menu.

To finish the story:
What I did was:

• Back up my PST file
• Move all the contacts in my default Contacts folder to a Provisional contacts folder. I checked that all the entries in my Address Book were no longer there. It was empty.
• From Outlook, File | Import and Export | Import | Personal Distribution List. I was given the chance to import to a contacts folder other than the default, but since I had already arranged things, I didn’t bother.
• After importing, I checked the contacts in both folders, on some occasions did away with the redundant info and on another completed/corrected contacts from both folders, then deleted the other.
• After depurating the contacts, I moved the ones in my Provisional contacts folder back to the default Contacts folder.
• I checked the Address Book and all the info was there. Great, great, great.
  [/list]Thank you all VERY much for your collaboration
  

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Hi all,

A week or so after I did the import, I now find that every time I click on my default personal folder, a special element is displayed. It looks like a normal e-mail, but has a different icon in the read/unread field. It displays as if I had e-mailed it to myself. Mailbox.pab is in the subject line but apparently there is no attachment (check the attachment field).
When I double click on this element, the attachment dialog pops up instead of opening the ‘e-mail’. The ‘attachment’ in question is the mailbox.pab file I’d imported.

I hadn’t noticed this until this morning I woke up more… sharp-minded . Thought I’d share this behavior with you to see if anyone can make any sense of it.

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Look as though a “document” got dragged into the top level of the PST. Have you tried moving it to Deleted Items? Is there a way to restore the Outlook Today view? (Maybe if you can’t get rid of it, you can hide it.

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Hi Jeff,

I hadn’t tried to delete it in fear that it could affect my Address Book in some way. After reading your msg, however, I decided to give it a try and:
1) Backed up my PST
2) Checked the number of contacts in my Address Book
3) Copied all my Address Book to a new TXT file and saved (keep reading)
4) Moved the strange element I reported in my previous post to Deleted Items
5) Checked that the number of contacts in my Address Book hadn’t changed
6) Copied all my Address Book to another new TXT file and saved
7) Compared the properties of both TXTs and verified that they had the extact number of bytes, which assures that no modification was made in the contacts of my Address Book
8) Deleted the element from the Deleted Items folder
9) Repeated 5), 6) and 7). Everything was allright

So it seems I got rid of the annoying element and the 103 K it weighed.
Thanks for your help!

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Not in mine it isn’t!
Mine is in “C:Documents and Settingsmyname.domainLocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOutlookMAILBOX.PAB”

Mind you, I did just copy it over from the previous version . . .

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