Thanks Mark,
after I posted, I saw the post by NewScience on 12/13/2006, which explained
that copying and pasting would overwrite the address book but importing
merges the address books.
It would be nice if microsoft let us in on the basic knowledge of the
program, instead of letting everyone ruin their email.
I ran into a simular situation years ago when I had backed up my email and
reformatted my harddrive, used the computer for awhile before restoring my
old email. I imported my old email and I lost all my new email that was in
the inbox. Still can't figure out that one. geez live and learn