Saving and Moving Your Contacts to a New Email or Computer
Also see: Helpful books on MS Outlook program for Email and Contacts from Amazon.
How to Keep Your Contacts and Transfer Them to a New Computing Device, Address Book or Email Address Account:
Saving and moving your contacts is one of the most common concerns when you're changing to a new computer, getting a mobile device, or switching to a new email service or account.
Most folks needing to do this will do better getting help with it than trying on their own.
However, here are some comments that may help guide the more adventurous among you as you run through the particulars of your own setup.
Situation 1
If you're using a web browser to access your email, switching to a new computer or using a new device like a tablet or smart phone generally will not require you to save and move your contacts.
This is because when you're using webmail all of your messages and contacts are saved on your email provider's computer, not your own computer.
Typically the only thing you might need to do is make sure that your email account app or you contacts app on the new device is set to "sync" (synchronize).
Situation 2
If you're changing to a new email address, saving and moving your contacts info generally is done by going into your settings or options for contacts or address book and finding the "Export" option. That enables you to save your contacts data in form of a "CSV" file.
Ideally you can then import that CSV file in through the Import option in settings or options provided by your email provider once you are logged into your new account.
Here's the frequent catch however - Not all CSV files are the same, and often it's necessary to tweek the contacts data for it to be accepted as an import. This often involves resolving differences in field names - something I've spent many hours doing when I had to transfer large numbers of contacts too many to retype one by one.
Tweeking the CSV file is something one usually does in a spreadsheet program such as Excel, or the equivalent programs provided in office suites like Apache Open Office, Libre Office, or WPS Office.
My rule of thumb is that if it's going to take more than 1-2 hours to re-enter one's contacts into a new email account by typing, then it's worth doing the export-import thing.
Situation 3
Things are a bit different if you're using a "desktop email app" rather than using your browser. These desktop apps include such programs as Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express, Incredimail and others.
In some cases, you can save contacts as well as messages in re-importable formats, but again sometimes there's a bit of tweeking required. Formats vary.
When setting up a new email account with a desktop app, nowadays its generally preferable to select the IMAP option if you're doing the setup yourself or using a Wizard.
Quick note here - the Windows 10 email app is an interesting hybrid worth trying if your emailing is mainly personal and requires minimum organizing.
Note fwiw - Outlook and Google versions of CSV are the most widely supported file formats when it comes to Contacts transfers.
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