Exporting/Importing Your Address Book to a Floppy Disk

Here are the instructions if you are wanting to move or copy the address book for Outlook Express to another computer. These instructions are designed to place a copy of your Outlook Express address book on a floppy disk so you can take it to another computer to install. Make sure you insert a blank floppy disk into your A: drive. Also make sure you put a title and date on the label of your floppy disk so you remember which floppy disk contains your address book.

Exporting Step #1) From the menu select File \| Export \| Address Book. (Pictured to the right)
Exporting Step #2) On the next window that appears, select the comma separated text file as your output format. This is just a basic text file. Click on "Export"
Exporting Step #3) Now you need to select where you want to place that file. As mentioned earlier, these instructions are designed to place a copy of your Outlook Express address book on a blank floppy disk so you can take it to another computer to import. Make sure you have a blank floppy disk inserted into the A: drive of your computer. In the window pictured to the right, type in A:\addressbook.csv into the text box as pictured to the right. This will save your Outlook Express address book to your floppy drive. The file name is addressbook.csv Type it in as it is pictured to the right. Click on "Next"
A note about Step #3) You saved your file to your floppy disk and is named addressbook.csv You could actually name that file anything you wanted. You could name it bobsaddressbook.csv or myaddress.csv Whatever name you choose make sure you have the .csv at the end of the name of the file. Notice that the file extension (the last three letters of the file name) are csv. csv stands for Comma Separated Values. The file you have on your floppy disks separates all the information in your address book by using a whole bunch pf commas. If you want, you can also use the "Browse" button to find the A: drive and select the name for your file.
Exporting Step #4) Now you need to select what fields you want to to export. To make things as easy as possible to remember, I always put a check mark beside all of the field names even though there are several fields I never use. Click on "Finish" You have now saved a copy of your Outlook Express address book on your floppy disk. The name of the file you exported is addressbook.csv Make sure you put a title and date on the label of your floppy disk so you remember which floppy disk contains your address book.

Now when you take your copy of your address book to a new computer, you can import all of those addresses by following these simple steps.

Importing Step #1) From the menu select File \| Import \| Other Address Book. (Pictured to the right) Notice that we are selecting the "Other Address Book" option and not the standard "Address Book". The reason we are doing this is because in Step #3 of the Exporting instructions, you saved your address book as a CSV (which stands for Comma Separated Values). Any kind of CSV file must be imported through the "Other Address Book" option as pictured to the right.
Importing Step #2) You are importing your CSV file, so select the "Text File (Comma Separated Values)" option as we have pictured to the right. Click on "Import"
Importing Step #3) If you followed the direction in the Exporting section of this page and you named the copy of your address book on the floppy disk addressbook.csv (as described in Exporting Step #3 above) In the window pictured to the right, type in A:\addressbook.csv into the text box as pictured to the right. This will import your Outlook Express address book from your floppy drive. You can also use the "Browse" button to find the file. Click on "Next"
Importing Step #3a) If you use the "Browse" button, the next screen that appears will look similar to the screen pictured to the right. You can use this window to find the file you are trying to import from your floppy drive.
Importing Step #4) Now you need to select what fields you want to to export. If you followed the instructions in Exporting Step #4 and you put a check mark beside every filed then, put a check mark beside all of the field names in this step and import all the information. Click on "Finish"
Special Note: You may get a message similar to the one to the right if you are importing an email address that already exists. If the address book you are importing has all the most current and up-to-date addresses, just click on the "Yes to All" button to replace all the old addresses with the new ones. Otherwise you can either use the "Yes" or the "No" button to go through each duplicate email address individually.
Importing Final Step) Once the address book has been successfully imported, you will get the message pictured to the right. Click on "Close" You now have transferred all of your addresses from your floppy drive to the Outlook Express address book on your computer.