How to Import Contacts into New Outlook

How to Import Contacts into New Outlook

This will be tricky to explain but I’ll do my best! First, how are your contacts setup in your Outlook Classic? I’ll review all three options and then give some instructions for each. I cannot go into a detailed “how to” but simple instructions will be helpful. If you need my help, you can use the form below. I will have step by step instructions at some point, these videos take a long time to make and are very complicated to get right. When I have the published, I will update this post.

Exchange/Outlook.com

The contacts in a business 365 Exchange account will natively setup in New Outlook. No need to import them. Once you add your account in New Outlook, give it some time to setup (should not take long) and your contacts will appear. What will be missing as of today’s date (April 7, 2025), very little data shows up. First/Last name, email, addresses, notes and some categories (this might change though in the future).

For those using Outlook contacts as part of their own home baked CRM system, you cannot view alot of the fields in New Outlook, so you will need to test. Keep in mind, New Outlook is developing every day and I have hope that by end of life, New Outlook will be capturing all your fields from your contacts. Right now, limited.

POP/PST (Any email account type)

POP accounts need a PST (Outlook Data File) to download the email into. These PST files often have a lot of other important data such as calendars, contacts, categories, flags, notes, journal entires, etc. Right now, New Outlook can only open a PST. Data cannot be viewed outside of emails and folders. I did a recent test and you can manually move one email at a time to another account in New Outlook.

The only way I know of how to import  your contacts from a PST is to move your email hosting to a Microsoft Exchange account, import into Gmail, Google Workspace, Yahoo, AOL hosting. These platforms will offer contacts that sync with your phone and viewable in New Outlook. This is a bit technical, so as I mentioned I’m skipping technical detail right now. I will update with instructions later on, it’s very time consuming to make a full step by step tutorial for these.

IMAP (any email account type)

When you setup an IMAP account in Outlook, you should see (This computer only) next to your contacts in Outlook. This means that the contacts are in a local OST file and cannot be migrated. They need to be exported out manually and then imported into a email account that allows synchronizing such as Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Google Workspace, Yahoo, AOL, etc. This actually can be quite easy to do! Video coming soon on this one!

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Category: Outlook Support