Contacts/ address?

Winuser · Dec 20, 2023

When it was a seperate program I had a list of my contacts and their phone numbers and addresses on my computer. I know they were moved to another MS program. I haven't accessed them in a very long time and can't remember where my contacts was moved to. I need a couple of address and don't know how to find them. Where did MS move them? I hope it wasn't an email program that I need to setup and never use.

Edwin · Dec 21, 2023

Winuser said:
When it was a separate program...

What program was that?

zebal · Dec 21, 2023

Edwin said:
What program was that?

It must be Windows contacts:

Windows Contacts - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Contacts were stored into your user profile under "Contacts" directory, the directory still exists now.
However to my knowledge contacts are now managed by multiple applications, one of them is outlook.

Berton · Dec 21, 2023

The old Outlook Express E-Mail Client stored the addresses in C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\Contacts, it was a *.wab file, if it's still on a computer a Search in File Explorer should find it.

Winuser · Dec 21, 2023

Edwin said:
What program was that?

I think @zebal is correct. I'm not going to setup Outlook just to get the list of my contacts. I'll call and ask them.

Winuser · Dec 21, 2023

Berton said:
The old Outlook Express E-Mail Client stored the addresses in C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\Contacts, it was a *.wab file, if it's still on a computer a Search in File Explorer should find it.

I never used Outlook but I did a search for .wab and didn't find anything useful.

zebal · Dec 21, 2023

Winuser said:
I'm not going to setup Outlook just to get the list of my contacts.

I don't think using outlook will restore your contacts though, if you kept them in contacts directory they should be there now.

Outlook and other MS programs lik People or Mail app store contacts for themself internally but those contacts are shared across apps if you use MS account, they're not stored in Contacts directory.

And the "Contacts" setting in "Privacy & Security" in "settings app" handles them each separately as apps rather than as contacts stored in Contacts directory, in other words it controls app access to contacts in your MS account that are used by one or multiple apps that share contacts.

I could be wrong about this but that's my understanding.

Winuser · Dec 21, 2023

zebal said:
I don't think using outlook will restore your contacts though, if you kept them in contacts directory they should be there now.

Outlook and other MS programs lik People or Mail app store contacts for themself internally but those contacts are shared across apps if you use MS account, they're not stored in Contacts directory.

And the "Contacts" setting in "Privacy & Security" in "settings app" handles them each separately as apps rather than as contacts stored in Contacts directory, in other words it controls app access to contacts in your MS account that are used by one or multiple apps that share contacts.

I could be wrong about this but that's my understanding.

I do have a Contacts folder in my User folder. It doesn't have anything in it. I tried running wab.exe and it just opens the empty Contacts folder. I guess the contacts on my computer are gone. I do have the phone numbers of my contacts on my phone.