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How We Can Import Excel to Outlook Contacts Just in 2 Minutes
Either you are a part of a startup or any well-established organization, communication is a critical component that brings a major impact on the business. In order to establish any communication, it becomes essential to have contact information of the person. Most of the users who have a lot of business or personal contacts, use Excel workbooks to save contacts information.
However, there come some circumstances when users need to access these contacts from applications like Microsoft Outlook. Well, this can be done simply using the manual as well as automatic techniques. Both methods to import Excel to Outlook contacts are easy to execute and only take a few steps to accomplish Excel to Outlook contacts. After this, you can easily access the Excel file contacts from Microsoft Outlook application.
Solution 1. Import Excel to Outlook Contacts Manually
Alert: This method is applicable only if your contacts are saved in Excel CSV format. If you are using some other Excel file type then, go for Solution 2.
If you want to import contacts from Excel to Outlook contacts manually then, follow the steps mentioned below:
Step 1. Save Excel Workbook as CSV File Format
First, you need to convert an excel spreadsheet into a CSV file format. Below are the steps to import Excel to Outlook contacts:
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Open the Excel workbook that you want to import in Outlook
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Click on File and select Save As an option
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Browse a destination location to save the file
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From Save As type box, select CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv) option
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Hit the Save button
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After this, the Excel will warn you that “The selected file type does not include a workbook that comprises multiple sheets”. Well, ignore this as this is just a limitation of CSV file and it will not affect your original workbook (.xlsx file)
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Hit the OK button
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You will get a message “Some of the features in the spreadsheet may be lost after saving it as CSV”. Ignore it and click Yes
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The original workbook will be closed automatically after this. Close the CSV file
Step 2. Import Resultant CSV to Outlook
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Open Outlook application and click on File to import Excel to Outlook contacts
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Select Open & Export and click Import/ Export
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Highlight Import from another program or file option
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Choose Comma Separated Values (Windows)
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Navigate to the location where you have saved CSV and select it
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Now, select Do not import duplicate items option (if required)
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Select the main contacts folder as destination folder and you will find that this is currently empty
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Click Finish
Step 3. Map CSV Columns with Outlook Contact Fields
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After importing CSV successfully to Outlook, click on Map Custom Fields
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Map Custom Fields wizard will pop up now. Here, under From section, you will get a box with column names from CSV file you are importing
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Under To, you will find standard fields that Outlook uses for the contacts. If any field matches a column in CSV file, you will get your column under mapped from
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The Name, First Name, Last Name, etc., are the standard Outlook contact fields. Hence, if the contact information in file has any of such contact names then, you can proceed
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It might be possible that you need to do some manual mapping. For this, just scroll down until you get Other Addresses that have + sign next to it
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Hit the + sign to expand it and you will get the match
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From the left pane, drag Cell Ph and drop it into Mobile Phone in the right pane
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You will find that Cell Ph is now displaying next to the Mobile Phone in Mapped from column
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You can drag one at a time and repeat the steps to map rest of the values to appropriate Outlook fields
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Hit the Finish button once Import Excel to Outlook Contacts process gets finished
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After this, you can simply access Excel contacts from Outlook application even without any mapping issues.
Solution 2. Direct Way to Import Excel Contacts to Outlook
If you are finding manual method lengthy and time-taking then, use Excel to vCard Converter Tool. It is designed in such manner that it can export all Excel file contacts to Outlook in batch mode and no matter which Excel file type you are using. CSV, XLS, XLSX, XLT, XLSM, XLSB, XLTX contacts can be converted to vCard using this. Follow the steps mentioned below to import contacts from Excel to Outlook contacts quickly:
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Open Excel to vCard Converter and click on the Browse button
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Select the excel file from which you want to import the contacts to Outlook. Click Open
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After previewing excel file contacts, hit the Next button to proceed with the conversion
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Match Excel file fields with Outlook attributes. For this, select the Excel fields from the left pane and select the corresponding vCard attributes from the right side
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Once all the fields are matched, hit the Add button and the tool will list matched attributes. Click Next
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In the next window, check all the appropriate options and select the vCard version to import Excel to Outlook Contacts
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Hit the Convert button, to begin with the conversion process
You are done now and you can access all your excel file contacts from Microsoft Outlook address book even without encountering any duplicate contacts issue.
Final Words
In this article, we have disclosed two different techniques to import Excel to Outlook contacts. The manual method, mentioned here might be complex for some users and they may feel it tedious as well. In order to overcome such limitations of the manual method, we have also recommended an automatic and quick solution for the same.