Importing Outlook contacts completely freezes Outlook

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Guest

I just purchased Office Professional and have exported my contacts from an
older laptop (as a .pst file) and installed the contacts on Outlook 2003 on
the new laptop. The contacts import fine, but as soon as the import
operation is complete Outlook takes up about 50% of the system resources and
never relelases them. Outlook becomes totally unresposive and I end up
terminating the process. I restart Outlook and the same thing happens. I
have uninstalled Outlook and re-installed it. I don't even import the
contacts and Outlook still takes up 50% of the resources. The only way I
have been able to get Outlook back to normal state is by doing a system
restore.

I have used Outlook for a long time, but have never seen thie behavior
before. Any clues would be greatly appreciated. At this point Outlook is
un-useable to me.
 
This is one of many scenarios where importing/exporting is not the preferred
(recommended) approach.

Simply "copy" the PST file from the laptop to your new laptop. If you copy
to a CD/DVD then don't forget to clear the "read-only" flag when you copy
the file to the new pst.

As to what is causing the problematic behaviour - any number of reasons that
are not worth finding out about if you have a cleaner solution that can be
applied especially when the actual cause may never be determined - just too
many variables.

Karl

_____________________________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0 / Exporter
"Power contact importers/exporters for MS Outlook '2000/2007"
http://www.contactgenie.com
 
Karl - thanks for the response. I am not 100% sure how this copy of the pst
should work. I have the contacts pst file on the new laptop and tried to
drag & drop it into Outlooks empty Contacts folder. It just puts the entire
pst file into a single contact. Obviously that is wrong. Maybe I am dense,
but what are the steps to make this copy operation work?

thx
 
PST file is where Outlook stores everything (contacts, email etc --- on the
assumption you're only using one PST file). Just copy the PST file as you
would any other file to a CD/DVD/Network location etc. Make sure Outlook is
closed on your old machine before you do this. On your new machine - where
you put the PST file is completely up to you but the default location is:

c:\Documents and Settings\YourUSERID\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook (where <C:\> = default Windows drive)
*** - if you are using all the defaults - this file should be
called Outlook.PST
- if you don't have any info on the new laptop - you can
just over-write the file that's in this directory and it becomes your
default automatically
otherwise....

Final steps.......
a) Ensure that the "Read Only" attribute for the PST file on the new
machine is removed (if it has been set by copying to CD etc)
b) open Outlook on your new machine - and from menu bar
File -->
Open -->
Outlook Data File - select the PST file you just
copied to this machine (if you didn't over-write Outlook.PST as mentioned
above)

If you do already have info on your new laptop that you don't want to lose -
you can either keep using 2 PST files or "COPY" the data from the 2nd PST
file to the appropriate folders to the first. The "operative" word here is
to use "COPY" (or "Move"). Don't recommend using Import/Export between the 2
PST files in this scenario.


Karl
_____________________________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0 / Exporter
"Power contact importers/exporters for MS Outlook '2000/2007"
http://www.contactgenie.com
 
Never mind. I assumed you already know how to copy and open files in
Outlook. You'll need to follow Karl's instructions on that first. Only then
can you copy from one folder to another.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Russ Valentine said:
Select the _contents_ of the Folder > Edit > Copy to Folder...

--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Clemens said:
Karl - thanks for the response. I am not 100% sure how this copy of the
pst
should work. I have the contacts pst file on the new laptop and tried to
drag & drop it into Outlooks empty Contacts folder. It just puts the
entire
pst file into a single contact. Obviously that is wrong. Maybe I am
dense,
but what are the steps to make this copy operation work?

thx
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