Importing contacts to Fastmail

lauricat · 27 Mar 2020, 05:01 PM

G'day.

I have FM account that was accessed via a IMAP desktop version of Outlook.

I now need to finally cut the Outlook tethers and move to the native FM web interface.

All the emails are there. No problems with that aspect.

However the contacts are not. There are over 500 in Outlook. I tried to export a .csv file containing the addresses unsuccessfully. The problem is that the .csv file is formatted incorrectly.

Is their any way I can fix this, other than manually doing this one address at a time? I have also a copy of the contact folder as a .pst file. Could that be used to import addresses?

Thanks.

BritTim · 27 Mar 2020, 05:20 PM

Which version of Outlook are you using? I have successfully transferred contacts between Outlook and FastMail in the past using .csv files. Are the headers in the .csv file in English?

lauricat · 27 Mar 2020, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BritTim

Which version of Outlook are you using? I have successfully transferred contacts between Outlook and FastMail in the past using .csv files. Are the headers in the .csv file in English?

Outlook 2016.

All the headers are in English. But they do not correspond with the FM standard. Like Outlook has mangled them..

Thanks for you help.

FredOnline · 27 Mar 2020, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lauricat

I now need to finally cut the Outlook tethers and move to the native FM web interface.

All the emails are there. No problems with that aspect.

However the contacts are not. There are over 500 in Outlook.

That's a lot of contacts to trust to the cloud.

TenFour · 27 Mar 2020, 08:48 PM

Fastmail has good instructions here: https://www.fastmail.com/help/contac...l#importingcsv

You don't have to change each entry one by one. Just rename the columns in the CSV file to match the accepted names for Fastmail using a program like Excel.

davidbstanley · 1 Apr 2020, 03:02 PM

I had this problem with an older version of Outlook. In the end I imported to Gmail, then imported from there to Fastmail. That worked, but there was an issue with company names not working correctly with Cardbook for Thunderbird. That is in another thread somewhere.

lauricat · 1 Apr 2020, 03:44 PM

OK.

I have sorted it out.

I had 2 problems:

First the old contact list (1400 +) had many contacts that were mangled. Just garbage - in Outlook. Also whilst you could decipher some of them when opened in Outlook>Contacts, the information would not be in the .CSV file.

So I manually had to fix that.

The next problem, was the import of Distribution Lists (15 or so). Once I had straightened out the CSV files with valid data, FM does not have a facility to import Distribution lists.

So what I did was to just use the 'Company' header in the .CSV file as the name descriptor for the Distribution List. The 'Company' descriptor was not been utilised anyway - ie. it was blank.

I imported the D/L, then I just searched contacts for that particular descriptor, the appropriate addresses popped up, and then added them all to the already named Distribution List.

It seemed to work.

The only Gotcha I found was that you must use a unique 'company' name for each; Like *not* 'passionfruit' and 'fruit' as 2 separate distribution lists; but use something like 'Passionfruit' and 'Oranges' as 2 groups.

Why that was I just don't know, but it caused some weirdness until I worked it out.

Mailchimp, however, made my head explode.....

HTH helps someone else out in Outlook hell...

27 Mar 2020, 05:01 PM	#1
lauricat Member Join Date: Oct 2012 Posts: 30	Importing contacts to Fastmail G'day. I have FM account that was accessed via a IMAP desktop version of Outlook. I now need to finally cut the Outlook tethers and move to the native FM web interface. All the emails are there. No problems with that aspect. However the contacts are not. There are over 500 in Outlook. I tried to export a .csv file containing the addresses unsuccessfully. The problem is that the .csv file is formatted incorrectly. Is their any way I can fix this, other than manually doing this one address at a time? I have also a copy of the contact folder as a .pst file. Could that be used to import addresses? Thanks.

27 Mar 2020, 05:20 PM	#2
BritTim The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2003 Location: mostly in Thailand Posts: 3,095	Which version of Outlook are you using? I have successfully transferred contacts between Outlook and FastMail in the past using .csv files. Are the headers in the .csv file in English?

27 Mar 2020, 08:48 PM	#5
TenFour Master of the @ Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: USA Posts: 1,749	Fastmail has good instructions here: https://www.fastmail.com/help/contac...l#importingcsv You don't have to change each entry one by one. Just rename the columns in the CSV file to match the accepted names for Fastmail using a program like Excel.

1 Apr 2020, 03:02 PM	#6
davidbstanley Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Kent, UK Posts: 693	I had this problem with an older version of Outlook. In the end I imported to Gmail, then imported from there to Fastmail. That worked, but there was an issue with company names not working correctly with Cardbook for Thunderbird. That is in another thread somewhere.

1 Apr 2020, 03:44 PM	#7
lauricat Member Join Date: Oct 2012 Posts: 30	OK. I have sorted it out. I had 2 problems: First the old contact list (1400 +) had many contacts that were mangled. Just garbage - in Outlook. Also whilst you could decipher some of them when opened in Outlook>Contacts, the information would not be in the .CSV file. So I manually had to fix that. The next problem, was the import of Distribution Lists (15 or so). Once I had straightened out the CSV files with valid data, FM does not have a facility to import Distribution lists. So what I did was to just use the 'Company' header in the .CSV file as the name descriptor for the Distribution List. The 'Company' descriptor was not been utilised anyway - ie. it was blank. I imported the D/L, then I just searched contacts for that particular descriptor, the appropriate addresses popped up, and then added them all to the already named Distribution List. It seemed to work. The only Gotcha I found was that you must use a unique 'company' name for each; Like not 'passionfruit' and 'fruit' as 2 separate distribution lists; but use something like 'Passionfruit' and 'Oranges' as 2 groups. Why that was I just don't know, but it caused some weirdness until I worked it out. Mailchimp, however, made my head explode..... HTH helps someone else out in Outlook hell...