Move Your Contacts from People App to Outlook RT (Live.com)

Contacts from People App to Outlook 2013 RT:

OK, so you’ve upgraded your Surface RT/2 to Windows 8.1 and you now have Outlook RT. Awesome!

Except now, you want to migrate you mail, calendar and contacts into it so you can use it. I mean, it’s nice to have email, contacts, and calendar in one spot, isn’t it? I definitely think so and am a big fan of Outlook for this reason.

But of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds. It greatly depends on what providers you use for these services: Google, Yahoo, and Office 365 all behave differently and migrating  them all can be a bit tricky. However, these instructions will work for any Surface tablet and cover Live.com accounts. We will write about moving Contacts from other accounts in future posts in this series.

Fortunately, we already covered how to sync up your Google mail and calendar, see Google Mail-Calendar in Outlook Sync. We also covered how to configure outlook with Office 365, see Set up Outlook with Office 365. [We know this all a bit confusing and we will summarize everything in an upcoming post.]

But now you may ask, what about my contacts that I’ve been keeping in the People App for Windows 8?

If you’re asking that question, chances are that you are using your MS Live account to store your contacts (By default, the People app uses the MS Live account you use to log into your Surface to store Contacts). So, how in the world do you move your contacts from the People app (with Live.com account) to MS Outlook RT?

This is what we’ll will cover in this post.

Basically, you have two options:

1. Configure Outlook with your Live account (recommended)
2. Export your Live contacts and import them to another account in Outlook.

Let’s look at each of them in turn…

1. Configure Outlook with your Live account.

This is the simplest way. If you’re already storing everything in your MS Live account, simply set it up in Outlook RT and you’re done. Here is how:

• Open Outlook
• Click File > Add Account.

• The Add Account box opens with the Auto Account Setup page showing.

• Type your name, email address, and password, and then retype your password.

• Click Next.
• When Outlook is done setting up your account, click Finish.

That’s it; you have now set up your Live.com (People app) contacts in Outlook. You can import other account’s contacts into here as well. More on that coming in near future.

2. Export Live contacts and import to Outlook.

You may want to use this option if you stored contacts in multiple accounts and just want to consolidate into one (not a Live.com) account. It requires you to first export the contacts and then import them into Outlook.

A. Export MS Live contacts:

• Log into your online Live.com (Outlook.com) account via a browser.
• Switch to People View by pulling down the arrow in top left corner.

• Choose People square.
  

• In the top middle, pull down arrow next to Manage and click Export.

• Choose Safe File and click OK.

• The .csv file will be downloaded into your Downloads folder.

B. Import CSV contacts file into Outlook:

This is a bit complicated but Microsoft actually has a nice write-up on it. I will not repeat it here, instead follow these instructions beginning with step 2 and you should be all set:
MS Instructions: Import Contacts from a CSV file

Now you know how to move your contacts from People App to Outlook 2013 RT with Live.com. I hope you find this useful. Next, coming up in the series is how to import your Yahoo contacts and Google contacts. To see all our current walk-thrus for Outlook, see Outlook RT Series. Please note, these instructions work for both Surface RT/2s and Surface Pro/Pro 2s.

You may also like our posts on Surface Carrying Case Reviews and Accessories for MS Surface.