iPhone Sync with Outlook 2000 Contacts Import Solution
Wed, July 4, 2007 at 07:00AM 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!
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!
Reader Comments (72)
Worked a treat, thank you!
Thanks to you all for suffering through this - because I think it's really going to help. I'm a die hard Treo user... but lately I've gotten the itch for new hardware thanks to the Palm Pre's expected release. Only problem is that I can never wait for fun and exciting things like that - so I'm trying out an iPhone for 30 days. I'm not an AT&T customer (yet), so purchasing an upgrade to my Microsoft 2K Office just to try out an iPhone seems a bit excessive.
I ran into all the problems you've been able to document here - and I'm hopeful that I'll be able to accomplish this sync tonight.
And it is odd that Apple decided to include conduits for Microsoft rather than Palm. And further, that it's not compatible with Office 2k for BOTH contacts and calendar is quite a pain. The only option is to use crappy Windows standard software, or spend a bundle on things one just doesn't need at home. Thanks again for the tips!!
Wow, can't believe this entry is almost two years old but thought I'd post a quick thank you anyways, cos you just sorted out the exact problem I was having with my new iPhone purchase. Can confirm this (still) works a treat. Thanks!
thank u very much it works perfect. very easy and simple
thanks bro
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Hmmm kinda worked for me.
Well at least all the phone numbers came through but none of the home addresses or email addresses.
I notice on some of the previous comments that people have alluded to email addresses coming through okay... am i doing anything wrong.
(The WAB file, saved to desktop, has all the adresses listed)
Appreciate your comments,
Cheers
Steve
thanks man this really worked and saved me a lot of time. I actually had a palm 680 previously so instead of using outlook i exported directly from palm's desktop manager and saved it as a cvs file then imported it into Window's contacts because my machine is a vista... then i was able to import it into my iphone with no issues.
I tried your fix. It was working great until I got to the sync part. It wouldn't sync because "a sync session could not be started." Any ideas?
Never mind. I tried it again today and it worked.
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Thank you for the updated fix. I used it after many frustrating attempts to sync my Iphone. It worked like a charm!