iPhone Sync with Outlook 2000 Contacts Import Solution

I have to admit that I find synchronization baffling. Most of the time, it works great. But when it doesn't, iTunes seems oversimplified and lacking detail to make it work.

My example here is Outlook 2000. Why am I still running Outlook 2000? Well, it got old on me. Office 2003 was no big change, so I never upgraded. Office XP is nice but I don't really need it. Maybe when I get it at work I'll upgrade so that I don't have a different work/home UI to deal with.

Anyway, iTunes doesn't say much during syncing, but it sure doesn't like Outlook 2000. It doesn't throw a big error message like a Windows program would; instead you just don't see anything when you're done.

Outlook 2000 will probably never sync with the iPhone, But I found a solution to at least IMPORT contact data from it into the iPhone. Here are the steps for this fairly easy 2-minute process:

1) Open Outlook 2000 and select File : Import/Export

2) Choose "Export to a File"

3) Choose "Comma Separated Values (Windows)"

4) Select your Contacts folder

5) Select your desktop or other place to save the temporary export file. Remember this name/location for step 10.

6) Click "Finish"

7) Now you need to open Windows Address Book. It is found in Start : All Programs: Accessories : Address Book

8) If it asks you if you want it to be your default vCard viewer, click "No"

9) Now we will import your contacts from the file you created using Outlook. Choose File : Import : Other Address Book : Text File (Comma Separated Values)

10) Choose the file you saved (in Step 5 you picked the name/location)

11) "Files of Type" will default to CSV; leave it at that and click "Open"

12) Click "Next" and accept the default field mappings

13) Click Finish

14) Now dock your iPhone and select the "Info" tab on your iPhone section of iTunes

15) Click "Sync contacts from:"and choose "Windows Address Book" instead of Outlook

16) Click "Sync" at the lower right of the iTunes screen. Voila!

Please let me know if this does or doesn't work for you. It is a nice one-time fix. I suppose you could use Windows Address Book to manage your contacts going forward, but yuck!

Update on Fri, July 13, 2007 at 05:24PM by Charles Gordon

UPDATE:  This fix can be problematic and can lead to your contacts being deleted from your iPhone. Read on!

We associated our iPhone/iTunes account with the Windows Address Book when we did the import. This worked fine for me. Then, somehow, WAB decided to associate itself with Outlook. Then, because this didn't work, iTunes kept overwriting the iPhones contacts with WAB contacts--which were a grand total of ZERO.

You can tell you will have this problem if your file : import/export options in WAB are grayed out.

To fix it, do this:
1) In WAB, go to tools : options
2) In the Data Sharing options, select "Do not share..."
3) Restart WAB and make sure the import/export functions are available. (Not a bad time to make a backup, either!)
4) Sync up your iPhone..should work!

Comments

[Elaine]

Your suggestion also works for Outlook 2007. Thank you!!!

[Richard]

I am in Australia, and my brand new 3G iPhone simply refused to talk to Outlook 2000. Thank you very much for your WAB solution to my problem in transferring 250 contacts.
Unfortunately the subsequent iPhone sync stripped the leading zeros from all of my numbers, and I have needed to manually edit them into the phone. I am petrified at the thought of syncing my iPhone contacts with Outlook for the present time, and will wait and see what Apple decide to do about this incompatability issue. Apple need to pay serious attention to this issue or risk the expense of ruining the reputation of a very nice device.

[Ben]

You can use www.nuevasync.com to use the new Microsoft exchange Push functionality of the iPhone to sync wirelessly all contacts via Plaxo. Also, if you use Plaxo to sync your multiple calenders to your google calendar then nuevasync can pull the google calendar to your iPhone too. This was great for me since I couldn't find any solution to migrating my Outlook 2003/Windows 2000 stuff to my iPhone. Now I wirelessly receive my contacts and calendar on my iPhone! No great solution yet for putting songs onto the iPhone 2.0 yet though.

[Alan]

hey man you are a life saver. i had thousands of contacts and was not looking foward to entering them 1 by 1.

thanks again

[Bob]

Sept 2 2008
Worked perfect the first time. Thanks.
Bob

[Mark S]

I does the job nicely but unfortunately duplicates all the contacts. When you have 800 contacts on your phone deleting 400 of them takes a bit of time but a small price to pay instead of introding a load of information for each contact. So all said and donei'm very gratefull for this information. Kind regards.

[Anders Malmborg]

Just bought my iPhone. Been fiddling a lot with the WAB import.
-First of all import in WAB was not selectable. This is because in an earlier version of WAB it was possible to select an autosync to Outlook contacts - which I've done probably. With version 6 you are no longer able to access these setting other than by registry settings. HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/WAB/WAB4 keyname "UseOutlook" set "1" to "0". Is's very important that this connection is broken, othervise tampering the WAB will tamper the Outlook contacts! I deleted all mine!! About 350 pcs! Fortunately they were in the removed folder in outlook.
-Secondly my outlook CSV export works like its been done over a coffee break. Line breaks in the notes and address fields destroys the correct file format. Instead I exported as an Excel file which seemed a lot more robust. Then I opened the file in excel and saved it as semicolon separated fields file.
-Third, import to WAB. You have take the time to map the fields properly and don't press Enter during mapping as this starts the import.
All the best!
Anders

[Mark Tucker]

Charles, You rock!

[Wieger Yntema]

Hello

I'm from the netherlands. I had the same problem. i couldn't sync with Outlook 2000 on my iphone. I used de following work around. Go to Windows addres book
1) In WAB, go to tools : options
2) In the Data Sharing options, select "Share..." and then restart te program!

now select al your contacts:
CTRL + A
and then copie them CTRL + C

then, go again to
options en select "do not share ... or somthing"
and restart again.

now delete all your contacts if you have these.
and click rigth with with the mouse and chose paste
or use CTRL + V
then a window pops up. NOW HOLD the "Enter" button. till its done creating new contacts.

now you can just sync with windows addres book

i'm sorry for my bad english. (you may edit this)

Good luck!

[Fergus]

Thank you Netherlands man

[Robert Knienider]

Thank you, Charles!

Your process worked for me, too.

I just had to manually replace commas with semicolons in the CSV file due to my German regional settings. Seems the exporter doesn't care for these settings while the importer does.

Robert

[Mike]

Thanks for the post Charles!

I had just followed the instructions given on apple's support site for syncronising with WAB and just as you mentionned I ended up loosing all of the contacts on my phone!

Your post just saved me from having to reenter all of my contacts by hand again.

cheers,

[Brainage]

Thanks for the Outlook 2000 to Iphone sync using Windows Address book .it worked

regards
Brainage

[sam]

Thanks a mil,
Have been looking for a solution for three weeks now ....
your instructions were clear and worked !!

[Isa]

Thank you very much!!! Finally i've managed to transfer my phonebook from Nokia -> Outlook -> WAB -> iPhone.

You are a lifesaver.

[Matias]

I know you guys have been looking at this since 2007 but I am embarrassed to say that I work for a Fortune 100 company and we are still on Windows 2k/Outlook 2k. I just got my iPhone to replace my Motorola Q which I synced regularly with Outlook Exchange server. I am now saving my Contacts as *.WAB and emailing that file to my personal computer (XP) and plan to sync my contacts as described above. I took 1 step forward and 2 steps back!

[Craig]

Hey- Thanks for the temporary fix...I am still using Outlook 97 and it worked fine?

Any temp fix for calendar events???

Thanks-
Craig :)

[jenn]

THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!

[Michael Baker]

Bless you Child! So helpful!

[cdrecor]

Thank you, it works great under Outlook 2003 too. I just followed the steps above. It worked without problems.

Great way, thank again!