Sadly, due to an oversight when migrating my Outlook data from one computer to the other, my AutoComplete cache was lost and since I never added people as a Contact, my Contacts folder is heavily outdated.
I’m now going through my Inbox and Sent Items folder and right click on a sender or recipient and choose: Add to Outlook Contacts
This is of course a really slow process and I think I’ve learned my lesson by now.
It there a quicker way to review the senders and recipients and add them to my Contacts folder without creating a massive amount of duplicate contacts?
How do I add a shared mailbox in Outlook 2013/2016 (Windows)? Adding shared mailbox in Outlook (Windows): Note: Permissions must be granted to the shared mailbox before a staff member can access the contents of a mailbox. Transfer an Email to Autotask with ONE Click! June 24, 2010 By Travis Austin 13 Comments. We just added a feature that we’re VERY excited about! When you receive an email in your Microsoft Outlook inbox that belongs in Autotask, you can now move it to Autotask.
Unfortunately, there is no native option in Outlook for this, but with some clever use of the “Import and Export Wizard” and Excel, we can most definitely speed up the process and have full control over who will get added as a contact.
The 5 steps below describe the entire process which in reality only takes a few minutes to complete (it sure took longer to write them down).
As an alternative, to fully automate it and also to prevent you forget to add people as contacts in the future, you can use an add-in instead as well. Two of them are listed at the bottom of this guide.
Step 1: Export “From Name” and “From Address” to a csv-file
In this example, we’ll use the Inbox folder as a source but you can use any other mail folder as well. See the section below Step 5 when you want to use the Sent Items folder as a source.
- Select the folder you wish to use as the source.
- Start the Import and Export Wizard.
- Outlook 2007
File-> Import and Export - Outlook 2010
File-> Open-> Import - Outlook 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / Office 365
File-> Open & Export-> Import/Export
- Outlook 2007
- Choose: Export to a file
- Choose: Comma Separated Values
- Verify that the correct folder is selected.
- Select a folder location and name for your csv-file.
For instance:export-addresses-inbox.csv
- If not selected yet, select the checkbox in front of: Export “E-Mail messages” from folder: Inbox
- Press: Map Custom Fields…
- In the “Map Custom Fields” dialog press: Clear Map
- Drag and drop the following fields to the “To:” box on the right.
- From: (Name)
- From: (Address)
- Press OK and then Finish to start the export process.
Make sure you only export the “From: (Name)” and “From: (Address)” fields.
Step 2: Remove duplicates
- Open the csv-file in Excel.
If it opened with everything in a single column, use the Data-> Text to Columns feature to get the 2 fields in separate columns. - Select the entire A and B columns.
- On the Data tab click: Remove Duplicates
- Press OK to start the duplicate removal process.
Step 3: Remove internal Exchange address
If you are using an Exchange account, then you’ll also see some addresses in the x500 format. As these are internal addresses of Exchange and these people are part of your Global Address Book, we can filter them out in the following way.
- Select cell A1.
- On the Data tab click: Filter
- Click the dropdown icon of cell B1.
- Choose: Text Filters-> Contains…
- As the condition type:
@
- Press OK to apply the filter.
- Select all the results (CTRL+A) and copy them (CTRL+C).
- Create a new sheet in Excel by clicking on the + or “new” icon at the bottom or by pressing SHIFT+F11.
- Paste the results in the newly created sheet (CTRL+V).
Step 4: Further filtering and saving
Depending on whether you are happy with the current results, you can apply additional filters or review the remaining list of names and addresses manually. By right clicking on a row number and choosing “Delete” you can remove an entire row.
Once you are happy with the results, use the Save As feature in Excel. It is recommended to save it under another name such as:
export-addresses-inbox-filtered.csv
.Make sure you save it as a csv-file and select to save only the selected sheet (your copied fully filtered list) when prompted.
Step 5: Import the csv-file into your Contacts folder
Now that you have a fully filtered list of names and addresses, you can import them as contacts in the following way.
- Start the Import and Export Wizard.
- Outlook 2007
File-> Import and Export - Outlook 2010
File-> Open-> Import - Outlook 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / Office 365
File-> Open & Export-> Import/Export
- Outlook 2007
- Choose: Import from another program or file
- Choose: Comma Separated Values
- Browse to the csv-file which you saved in Step 4.
- Select how duplicates should be handled when a contact with that name already exists in your Contacts folder.
- In the next step, select your Contacts folder.
- To prevent mistakes, you can also create a new Contacts folder for the Import process and then move these imported contacts to your main Contacts folder afterwards. To create a new Contacts folder, you’ll need to Cancel the Import process.
- If not selected yet, select the checkbox in front of: Import “export-addresses-inbox-filtered.csv” into folder: Contacts
- Press: Map Custom Fields…
- In the “Map Custom Fields” dialog press: Clear Map
- Drag and drop the fields from the left to the following fields in the “To:” box on the right.
- From: (Name) –> Name
- From: (Address) –> E-mail
- Press OK and then Finish to start the import process.
Map your fields from the CSV-file to the correct Contact fields in Outlook.
Note: When you don’t see both fields in the Map Custom Fields dialog, it means that you csv-file was not saved with a comma as the delimiter. To correct this see: Importing a contacts csv export.
Using the Sent Items folder as a source
If you want to use the Sent Items folder as a source for your Contacts, then you can achieve this by exporting the To (Name) and To (Address) fields in Step 1.10.
However, in Step 4, you must filter out all the rules which have a semicolon ( ; ) in them as those rows contain multiple addresses which can’t be directly imported as multiple contacts.
The same applies when you want to do this for the CC field for any mail folder.
Fully automate adding new contacts with an add-in
Even though the above process is quite an efficient way to quickly review and add a lot of senders or recipients as Contacts, you can also fully automate it with one of the add-ins below.
- Add Email Address by Sperry Software(discount code: BH93RF24 )
- Add Contacts by MAPILab(discount code: 4PM76A8 )
Both add-ins offer the option to process already sent or received emails and also to select a Contacts folder to save the contacts to. They both are also careful not to create any duplicates even when that contact already exist in another folder.
In addition, they offer the option to add new contacts the first time you send an email to that person so you’ll never forget adding people as contacts again.
![Outlook Outlook](http://images.calyptix.com/blog/autotask-on-crossover.png)
A few of the options of the Add Contacts add-in by MAPILab.
I’ve been granted access to a shared mailbox on our Exchange sever. For this, I’ve been given the name and email address of the mailbox but I didn’t get a password for it.
When I try to add the account, Outlook already resolves my current name and email address. While I can change this, it then also asks for the password which I don’t have.
How am I supposed to access this mailbox?
This is one of those issues which is easier to solve than you might think. However, your Exchange administrator must have granted “Full Access” permissions for that mailbox to your account for you to be able to add it as an Exchange account.
As an alternative, you might be able to add it as an additional mailbox rather than an additional account.
Either way, you should be able to do this without knowing the password for that mailbox.
Note 1: Contact the mailbox owner or your Exchange administrator if you are unsure about which permissions you have been granted for the mailbox.
Note 2: Adding a mailbox as an additional Exchange account is only possible in Outlook 2010 and later. When you use Outlook 2007 or previous, you can still add it as an additional mailbox.
Method 1: Add as an additional Exchange account
When you add an account, you are prompted for the password belonging to the email address that you want to add. However, when you have Full Access to the account, you can also logon with your own credentials.
How to do this, might not be directly clear in the Add Account wizard in Outlook 2013 and previous, but luckily is much clearer in the new Add Account wizard in Outlook 2016, Outlook 2019 and Office 365.
Add Account: Outlook 2007, Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013
When you add a new account and your current username and email address is already filled out in the wizard, simply change the email address to the email address that you want to add and you’ll see a “Password” and “Retype Password” field appear.
Filling out these password fields is only required when you actually want to log on with the account which holds that email address. To log on with your own credentials, don’t fill out anything in these fields but click “Next” instead.
Don’t fill out a password when setting up a shared mailbox for which you have been granted “Full Access” permissions. (click on image to enlarge)
Auto Account Setup will now look up the server details and once it has found them, it will prompt you for your user credentials. You can now fill out your own username and password.
Depending on how your domain has been configured, you must specify your username in one of the following formats:
- username
- domainusername
When prompted for credentials, fill out your own username and password instead of credentials of the shared mailbox itself.
When you indeed had been granted “Full Access” permissions to the mailbox, the account configuration will be successful and the mailbox will be added to your account list and Folder List.
Add Account: Outlook 2016, Outlook 2019 and Office 365
When you add a new account, you are first only prompted for the email address. In the second step, you’ll be prompted for the password belonging to that email address.
Instead of supplying the password for the shared mailbox, click on the “Sign in with another account” link at the bottom of the dialog. You’ll now be prompted for you own login name or email address to login and your password in the next step.
Click on the “Sign in with another account” link to logon to a Shared Mailbox, for which you have Full Access permissions, with your own credentials.
Once the authentication has completed, the Shared Mailbox will be added as an additional account with your own credentials.
Important!
When you have been granted “Full Access” permissions to the mailbox but your administrator has also enabled the “Automapping” property for it, then the mailbox might have been added as a “hidden” additional mailbox already. Having a mailbox connected as both a Shared Mailbox and as an additional account is not supported and causes a variety of issues. If you see the shared mailbox added twice, you must ask your administrator to remove the Automapping property. For further details see: Can’t remove additional Exchange mailboxes.
When you have been granted “Full Access” permissions to the mailbox but your administrator has also enabled the “Automapping” property for it, then the mailbox might have been added as a “hidden” additional mailbox already. Having a mailbox connected as both a Shared Mailbox and as an additional account is not supported and causes a variety of issues. If you see the shared mailbox added twice, you must ask your administrator to remove the Automapping property. For further details see: Can’t remove additional Exchange mailboxes.
Method 2: Add as an additional Exchange mailbox
When you don’t have been granted “Full Access” permissions to the mailbox by your Exchange administrator, you might only have been granted “Folder-level” or “Delegate” permissions by the mailbox owner.
In that case, you can add the mailbox to your Outlook configuration without password in the following way:
- Open the Account Properties dialog:
- Outlook 2007
Tools-> Account Settings… - Outlook 2010 / 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / Office 365
File-> section Info-> Account Settings-> Account Settings…
- Outlook 2007
- Double click on your Exchange account to open its properties.
- Click on the button: More Settings…
- Select the Advanced tab.
- Click on the button: Add…
- Type the name or the email address of the mailbox which you’d like to access.
- Confirm all the open dialogs to return back to Outlook.
The mailbox should now be added to your Folder List.
Via your Exchange account properties, you can add a shared
mailbox as an additional mailbox rather than an additional
Exchange account.
Note: If you can’t expand the mailbox, you haven’t be granted the correct permissions by the mailbox owner. Most likely you haven’t been granted the “Folder visible” permission on the top level folder of the mailbox itself (important!) and/or any of the subfolders which you are allowed to access. Once the permissions issue has been solved, restart Outlook and you should be able to open the mailbox.