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For privacy or security reasons, you might not want to upload all your email contacts to one of those many websites that allow you to convert. Thus, we will only use Windows File Explorer for the job.
First, we will export the email contacts from Roundcube Webmail, an open-source web-based email client used by most hosting providers, and then import the contacts into Outlook Web Access (OWA) provided by Microsoft 365. You need to convert the VCF file into CSV because OWS only supports contact imports from CSV.
Exporting email contacts
To export the contacts from Roundcube:
Log in to the webmail interface.
Click the Contacts icon.
Click the Export icon and select Export all (see screenshot below).
This downloads all your contacts to a file with a .vcf extension.
Importing contacts using File Explorer
The next step is to import the VCF file to Windows Contacts using File Explorer. To import the file:
Open File Explorer, paste the following path in the address bar, and press Enter:
%systemdrive%\users\%username%\contacts
This opens the Contacts folder for the logged-in user.
Click Import, as shown in the screenshot below:
You will see the Import to Windows Contacts dialog box with several choices. In this dialog box, select the vCard (VCF file) option, and click Import.
Note that if you're trying to convert a CSV file to VCF format, you should select the CSV (Comma Separated Values) option here.
Now, browse, and select the VCF file you exported from webmail in the previous section. You will see multiple popups for each contact. Just keep clicking the OK button, and the contacts will continue to be added.
At the end, you will see all the contacts in File Explorer, as shown in the screenshot below.
Exporting contacts to CSV
Now that you have your contacts added in Windows Contacts, you could use the Export option to generate either a CSV or a VCF file. Since we imported the VCF file in the previous section, we will export the contacts to CSV format so that it can be imported into Outlook Web App (OWA) straight away.
To export the contacts:
With the Windows Contacts folder open in File Explorer, select all the contacts (Ctrl + A), and click Export.
Now select CSV (Comma Separated Values) and click Export.
If you're converting to VCF, you should select vCards (folder of .vcf files) here. Note that you will get multiple VCF files—one for each contact. In this case, you can use the following command to merge multiple VCF files into a single file:
copy *.vcf contacts.vcf
Next, select the CSV option and click Export.
Now click Browse, provide the path and name to export the CSV file, and click Next.
Finally, select the fields that you want to export to the CSV file, and click Finish.
In the end, you will have all your contacts exported in the required file format (CSV format, in our case).
Importing contacts into Outlook Web Access
Now that we have our contacts in a CSV file, we will import the file into Outlook Web Access (OWA). To import the contacts:
Log in to OWA in your web browser.
Click the People icon on the left.
Now click Manage and select Import Contacts.
In the Import Contacts popup, click Browse to select the CSV file you exported earlier, and click Import.
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All the contacts are now imported into OWA.
Good idea there, didn’t know that option existed, will come in useful.
You can get directly to the path regardless of the user using this rather than having to put in username too:
%userprofile%\contacts
is indeed a good shortcut to open Windows contacts. Thank you for mentioning it.
Note that while Windows Contacts also offers a vCard export option, a long-standing bug in all versions (Vista through 11) converts Unicode characters to question marks in the VCF files (CSV export does not suffer from this issue): https://tinyapps.org/blog/201402210715_editing_vcards_with_bash.html
Thank you for pointing that out.
Useful information. Thank you.
Thank you. Do you by any chance now if there is a way to skip or default to simply importing them without having to hit “ok” for each contact? I.e I have well over 5,000 and cannot sit there for a few days 🙂 Let me know fi you can. Either way thank you again “)
Hi, This may not be an ideal solution but you could use some tool like Pulover’s Macro Creator or AutoHotKey to hit OK for you. Just run it in a loop and you will be good.😊
https://www.macrocreator.com/