Outlook contacts files

Okay, this is a real plea for help. I don't know nuthin' about Outlook, but I'm trying to help a friend who's less tech-savvy than I. He's been using Outlook 2003 for several months, and he has an old list of contacts from several years ago that he would like to clean up and use now. It was created at an old job, using a version of Outlook dating from Win 98, although he remembers having to switch over to Win XP, but this file hasn't been touched in at least 3 years. The data from his old laptop was saved on his new computer, and now he'd like to make use of this file.

I thought I had figured out the processes necessary to bring in an old Address Book into Outlook 2003, but as so many times when dealing with Micro$oft, I'm stymied by the vocabulary. I find it hard to believe that there's no way to import old contacts, but it wouldn't surprise me if somewhere along the line Micro$oft made some critical change that renders these two files totally incompatible.

 

How were the old files saved, .pab, .pst, .csv? Have you copied the old files onto the new machine?

 

The files are .pst files, on the new machine in a directory containing everything that was on his old hard drive.

Maybe I'm dense - or maybe this is pretty convoluted - but when I tried to Import, it asked for a destination folder but never asked where the source file was. Obviously this file is supposed to be in a default location somewhere, but I don't find anything that specifies that.

 

When you click on "import and export" next box that comes up, you have to highlite "import from file" next box you can choose source file= "personal folder file(.pst) and then point to the file you have saved and follow rest of wizard.

 

Thanks so much! It worked like a charm. It was the semantic distinctions I wasn't getting - the difference between the .pst and the .pab files, for instance. Now all that remains is to edit the enormous number of contacts he's just re-acquired - with 3-years out of date email addies...