Finding the Outlook Express Address Book

Subscriber Jerome Safer wrote recently about trouble importing addresses from Excel into Outlook Express:

Terry,
I am trying to help a friend Import some contacts from Excel into Outlook Express or Outlook. I have studied the Import and have done a test import of a .csv file from Excel into Outlook Express and it worked until it hit an Error.

I am trying to find out where the Address Book file is stored On the computer. I thought the type was something like *.wab but I have not found it yet in any searches. I want to back up the Address book before doing the Import in case there is any problem with the Import.

Can you help me find the Address Book file?

Regards,
Jerome Safer
Birmingham, AL.
I receive your tips newsletter on a regular basis.

Jerry's having problems finding the Outlook Express address book. He was on the right track, in that Outlook Express stores it in a .wab file, as he expected. However, the directory is one of the "hidden" directories in Windows.

One way to find files in hidden directories is via the Windows Explorer "Search" options. You can tell Search to search the hidden directories also. It's found in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserID]\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book replace [UserID] with your user ID.

[See article 7 in this issue HOWTO: Searching using Windows Explorer's Search Functions.]

Outlook, on the other hand, has data it calls Contacts, which are stored within the .PST data files. These PST files also have messages in them -- they're not just an address book.

Outlook used to have .PAB files (Personal Address Book files). These are no longer created by current versions of Outlook.

So, it sounds like his easiest route is to import them into Outlook Express (after figuring out what his error was and getting it solved) and then, from OE, export them to be imported into Outlook's Contacts.

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