managing categories in contacts

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Guest

I have a few thousand contacts in Outlook 2003. It's a real challenge to set,
change and generally manage the various categories for my contacts. DOes
anyone know of a good tool to help with this?
Thanks.
David
 
Background - I'm a consultant and often do different things with contacts for
different clients. I use ontacts subfolders to do all this today but no
longer can do what I need in Outlook 2003. And BTW - I wold be wiling to read
but I can find no documentation on how to do this stuff.
Three key needs:
How do I set, say, 500 contacts to a certain category? Then change to
another category. in the future. Multiple categories would be common.
Then how do I set up a custom view such that when I'm looking at a
particular category, I view them by company with specific columns, inlcluding
custom columns.
Then how do I back up allso that I get the views, etc. back if I have to
rebuild my machine?

Thanks so much for your help.
David
 
To set a group of contacts to a category:
1. Highlight all of the contacts who you want to be in the category.
(Easiest way is to create a view that has all of and only them.)
2. Edit, Categories, then either
a. type in the category name or
b. add the category to the master list and check it.
 
Custom view:
Views; define views; New; thereafter mostly self-explanatory, except
possibly for custom fields:
highlight fields, in lower left corner, select user-defined fields in
folder, then use field chooser to put then in the view where you want
them.

For backup, I would have thought you would not want the view more than
the data. Why not just make an extra off-machine copy of the .pst file
? I don't think that I know how to back up or export a view structure.
You could export the data for that view, which implicitly gives the
structure.
 
It's not obvious how, but you can use a PST file to back up your views. Here's a link to an article I wrote on how to manage this:

http://www.exchangeadmin.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=8650

If you are not connecting to an Exchange server, you will not be able to use the quick-and-dirty method and will need to add some additional steps to use the other technique. Specifically, you will need to to make a copy of any folder-specific view as a general view applying to all [mail, contact, etc.] folders. Use the steps described in the topic on restoring views. Then you will be able to back up those general views by using the backup technique outlined.
 
Thanks. This is what I had been trying but you inspired me to dig deeper. It
turns out unfortunately that selecting all of them and then checking the box
does not change any of them, for some reason. The box appears checked when
you look again, but if you look at the address card, there is no category
listed. However, if you type the name of a category that is already defined
in the master category list into the "Item(s) belong to these Categories",
they all get assigned this category. You can also right click on any of the
selected contacts and select Categories to get same. Thank you.
David
 
Thanks Sue. I'll check out your article. I'm not using Exchange Server. Do
you know if "Backup Outlook Settings" will save custom views?
David

Sue Mosher said:
It's not obvious how, but you can use a PST file to back up your views. Here's a link to an article I wrote on how to manage this:

http://www.exchangeadmin.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=8650

If you are not connecting to an Exchange server, you will not be able to use the quick-and-dirty method and will need to add some additional steps to use the other technique. Specifically, you will need to to make a copy of any folder-specific view as a general view applying to all [mail, contact, etc.] folders. Use the steps described in the topic on restoring views. Then you will be able to back up those general views by using the backup technique outlined.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers



ProfDD said:
For backup, I would have thought you would not want the view more than
the data. Why not just make an extra off-machine copy of the .pst file
? I don't think that I know how to back up or export a view structure.
You could export the data for that view, which implicitly gives the
structure.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Also, do you know if the category list gets backed up if I save a .pst file?
Or how about if I "Save Outlook Settings"?
 
Also, do you know if the category list gets backed up if I save a .pst file?
Or how about if I "Save Outlook Settings"?

Sue Mosher said:
It's not obvious how, but you can use a PST file to back up your views. Here's a link to an article I wrote on how to manage this:

http://www.exchangeadmin.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=8650

If you are not connecting to an Exchange server, you will not be able to use the quick-and-dirty method and will need to add some additional steps to use the other technique. Specifically, you will need to to make a copy of any folder-specific view as a general view applying to all [mail, contact, etc.] folders. Use the steps described in the topic on restoring views. Then you will be able to back up those general views by using the backup technique outlined.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers



ProfDD said:
For backup, I would have thought you would not want the view more than
the data. Why not just make an extra off-machine copy of the .pst file
? I don't think that I know how to back up or export a view structure.
You could export the data for that view, which implicitly gives the
structure.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
dprawel said:
Also, do you know if the category list gets backed up if I save a .pst file?
Or how about if I "Save Outlook Settings"?
Click to expand...

dprawel, did you get your answer? I'd like to know, too.

In addition, is this applicable to Outlook2007? I use the beta with info
imported from Outlook2000. I plan to use Categories and there isn'tg much
documentation on them!

Jonathan Rawle
 
Thanks for experimenting. I had precisely the same need for some comunity and
political activities, to assign lists of names that I import from to a
category like State Legislators.
 
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