In Windows 7, Windows Live Mail allows export of the contact book, but the categories created are totally ignored which creates a lot of work to put everything back in shape.
Here is a method for saving for the relocation or transfer of the contact book identical to one PC to another with the categories in place.
Enable the displaying system protected files
In Windows 7 File Explorer, click on the Menu “Organize”, then click “Folder and search options” :
Click View tab and uncheck “Hide protected files of the operating system” :
Go to the directory where the contact files are located in Windows 7
Go to:
C: > Users > Username > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows Live Contacts > {ca6799bb-F513-47a7-9c0b-ed741f516189} > DBStore
Note: You may need to run “Grant Administrator” reg file in order to open the folder. Kindly read Solution for Windows 7 is not allowing access to owner™s own file and download the reg file from here.
Note that, {ca6799bb-F513-47a7-9c0b-ed741f516189} is just an example, the hex name may vary and there may be multiple entries too.
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Please click the above screenshot to view in full size.
Copy the files and folders in the DBStore folder to a USB drive. For multiple second bracketed folders, copy the entire Windows Live Contacts folder.
Copy:
contacts.edb
contact.pat
dbstore.ini
Edb.chk
Microsoft Windows Live Mail must be closed if the copy is prohibited.
Relocation or transfer to another PC
Go to the Contacts folder as described above. Copy files from the USB Drive (it will replace the existing ones). Launch Windows Live Mail to ensure everything is correct . You must find your contact book categories as it was when the backup.
Reconfigure the option to display “Hide protected files of the operating system” again.
That’s over and in less than 5 minutes, the user will found his address book as before.
About Abhishek Ghosh
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Hi, i am using windows live mail 2011 and i tried your method to transfer the contacts categories from my old PC .
however windows live mail 2011 does not seem to have “windows live contacts” in the directories path you mentioned. I copied “windows live contacts” and its files over from my OLD PC just as described by you but my new PC’s windows live mail 2011 does not read it into the contacts.
can you advice?
thanks
lim
Hello Lim,
It seems that the Contacts has been moved to –
.
I am not sure about the backward compatibility, that is the reason we have not updated it.
Please check and report whether it works or not.
Thanks in advance.
Abhishek
Hi, this is a good beginning, however how to export the categories from WLM to Thunderbird?
I can export the ‘all contacts’ but I lose the categories. It would be very much work to manually get those back.
Any clues?
|Greetings from The Netherlands,
Job
I copied my contacts.edb (with about 4000 entries) to another folder as a backup and edited the content in the original contacts.edb for a specific purpose. Now I want to reinstate the backup copy, the original. How do I do it.
I had a csv file (aboout 2000 contacts) of the original contacts.edb, but the import function hangs after importing about 100 entries.
Any suggestions to get around.
I am trying to find the way if its possible to restore from the csv file from command prompt.