One of the most important parts of a comprehensive backup is making a copy of your address book. If some day you lose access to your Outlook account, you'll be glad that you exported its contents, retaining the means with which to contact your friends, family and business connections.
Downloading your contacts also allows you to switch to another email client in a more seamless manner, so if Outlook has become too bulky for your taste, you won't have to rebuild your address book from scratch. Here are step-by-step instructions for downloading and importing your Outlook address book.
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How to Download Your Address Book in Outlook 2016 and Prior
1. Click File.
2. Select Options from the side menu.
3. Click Advanced from the side menu.
4. Select Export under Export.
5. Select Export to a file and click Next.
6. Click Next. Here we are importing a Comma Separated Values File so we could import the address book to a program of our choice. If you are sure you want to stick with Outlook, select the Outlook Data File option.
7. Select Contacts and click Next.
8. Name your address book backup and click Next.
9. Click Finish.
Your address book has been downloaded!
How to Import Your Address Book to Outlook 2016 and Prior
1. Click File.
2. Select Open & Export.
3. Select Import/Export.
4. Select "Import from another program or file" and click Next.
5. Select the kind of Address Book file kind you're importing and click Next. Here we are importing a Comma Separated Values File.
6. Click Browse.
7. Select the file you're importing and click OK.
8. Click Next.
9. Select Contacts and click Next.
10. Click Finish.
Your Outlook contacts have been imported!
Microsoft Outlook Tips
- Block a Sender in Outlook 2016
- How to Instantly Mark Messages as Read in Outlook 2016 and Prior
- Edit New Message Alerts in Outlook
- How to Mail Merge in Office 2016
- Set an Out of Office Reply in Outlook
- How to Create Custom Groups in Outlook 2016
- How to Archive Mail in Outlook 2016
- Create an Email Signature in Outlook 2016 and Prior
- Attach a Calendar Event to an Email
- Set Up a Universal Inbox
- Import Contacts to macOS Address Book
- Purge Deleted Messages
- Delete Addresses in Outlook Autocomplete
- Change the Attachment Size Limit in Outlook
- Import Contacts via CSV
- Back Up Outlook Data
- Change Fonts in Outlook
- Export Contacts to CSV
- Add an Image to Your Signature
- Set Up Out-of-Office Messages
- Create Email Templates
- Restrict Notifications to Important Emails Only
- Get Read Receipts
- Use Two Time Zones for Meetings
- Recall an Email
- Save Common Searches
- Filter Email
- Block Unwanted Mail
- Stop Sending Winmail.dat
- Automate Repetitive Actions
- Schedule Outgoing Mail
- Create Canned Replies
