Saving E-mail Contacts with a CSV File

SAVING YOUR CONTACT LIST

Most of the time it is difficult to lose your contact list in your e-mail. There was a time when the contacts were saved ON YOUR COMPUTER. That is not the case with most e-mail servers any more. At least to the best of my knowledge. Today the e-mail servers keep your contacts out in hyperspace somewhere. If you forget your password you cannot access your e-mail and therefore you cannot send e-mails to your friends. But the contact address is still out on the web in the servers computer. However if someone should hack into your e-mail they have access to the contacts of yours. Sometimes the hacker just sends spam to all your contacts that looks like it came from your computer. It is also possible that malware could be sent to all your contacts, and there is nothing you can do about it. Another possibility is that the hacker may use your contacts for their own uses and then wipe your contacts from your email server so that you cannot contact anyone, to apologize, to warn or even to say hello.

There is a way to save your contacts on your personal computer or on a thumb drive so that it is easier to recover if the worst happens. You can create a “ .csv file “, which stands for “Comma Separated Value” file. Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail and others allow you to create a .csv file. Juno states that they do not support this action, there may be others that do not allow it also. A .csv file can be created in the three email servers mentioned and the process was similar.

1. Open your email server.
2. Select your contact list and open it. All your contacts should be in view.
3. Look for “Export” The location is a bit different for each email provider. In Yahoo click the box that selects every contact. Then click the word “Actions”. (Before all contacts or at least some of them are selected only the word “Import” will appear.) In AOL click the gear icon that says TOOLS and you will have the choice of Import or Export. In Gmail click the word More and you will have a choice of Import and Export plus other choices.
4. Left click “Export
5. Select a format of some sort of CSV. Gmail has three different formats. One for another gmail account, one for other email servers, one for Apple users. (If you plan to go from gmail to gmail choose,Google CSV format (for importing into a Google account) Otherwise choose the generic format. AOL only has one CSV format plus a couple others that are not CSV. Chose CSV always.
6. Somewhere there will be another place to click “Export”. It likely will be in a pop-up box.
7. Select a location to save a file that you can find. Your computer will probably assign a name for the file. It would be good to name the file something that is meaningful for you. A suggestion might be, “Contacts From ????? email.” A name like that will allow the computer to search for it from the “Windows Start Button Search Box.” Also you know that you are looking for “Contacts --------”
8. Left click “Save” and it will save as a “Microsoft Office Excel Comma Separated Value File” even in “Open Office”
9. When you open the file for viewing you may get a pop-up box that is called Text Import. The character set of “Western European” will be highlighted in blue. Left click “Okay” and it will open as a standard spreadsheet

When it file is open as a spreadsheet there will be a lot of information that you have not put in and the spaces will be blank. This may include things like birthdays, anniversary, work number etc. The information that you have put in will be on one line per contact stretched across many spaces.

To import to a new e-mail follow the same procedure except choose “Import” and select the CSV file and all the information will be put into the new e-mail account. You can also edit the CSV file in the spreadsheet format. You can add, delete, modify any item or row.

If you lose your contact list again or you create a new email address you can basically reverse the procedure by choosing the Import. You are back in business in just a few keystrokes.