Outlook Contacts and Notepad++

In Outlook Contacts/Notes I extensively use text color, hilight color, Boldface, Larger/smaller type..in short, everything a .rtf file affords me. All of this information is saved in a .pst file.

I have been told this approach to data is “unusual” but it works for me.

I have a feeling that much of this will go away in a future version of Outlook. I’m also preparing for a possible transition to Thunderbird which doesn’t support .rtf entries to my knowledge.

When I export my Outlook Contacts to .csv and import the .csv file back into Outlook (on another computer) I get a very good idea how this (formerly rtf'd) information will look as text. Most of it is legible and readable but there are a number of special characters inserted to replace quote marks, Em dashes, etc. I expected this. In fact I thought I was going to encounter far more of these substitutions to account for every non-vanilla-text conversion I made (including commas, since they are the .csv delimiter character).

Opening the .csv file in Notepad++ provided a better view of this information, and adding Notepad’s Lint plugin even provided more clarity (esp. if you really like colors!) . I suspect changing Encoding to UTF-8 allows Notepad to understand a “flavor” of .csv that relates to how Outlook structures a .csv file. In other words, I’m convinced that Notepad++ “understands” the Outlook .csv export quite well and should be able to replace all the special characters (with the text they represent) and maintain the proper comma-separation Outlook requires to stick the data as text into the proper ‘boxes’.

Is there an easy way to get Notepad++ to generate a .csv file that Outlook can import that will do this?

No

jro11 said:

to generate a .csv file that Outlook can import that will do this?

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You can open .csv files in Excel.

As for the rest, I can’t even..
But re .rtf files. Some ISP’s and companies wont accept email and attachments with rtf as RTF has been abused and is a favourite of hackers.
You will probably need a plugin for Thunderbird to import these files. I don’t really know..



Also, formatting options/settings aren’t retained in a PST file, to my knowledge, so I am unsure what you mean by Contacts/Notes.
Unless you are referring to emails you formatted and sent with RTF format, then yes, they should look the same as they were previously.

One more thing: I tried a few ways to import contacts into Thunderbird from Outlook 2021 which included directly (.csv) and also by trying to import an Outlook profile which you can do in Thunderbird. Everything went well except for the contacts, bloody disaster, crap everywhere.

You may possibly have luck uploading or importing you contacts from Outlook to Gmail. Then to Thunderbird. I don’t know, Jro.

antspants said:

formatting options/settings aren’t retained in a PST file, to my knowledge, so I am unsure what you mean by Contacts/Notes

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Contacts/Notes refers to the Notes field (the largest field) in an Outlook contact. It accepts text with all the frills allowed under RTF. That information must be saved/recalled from a .pst file.

antspants said:

I tried a few ways to import contacts into Thunderbird from Outlook 2021 which included directly (.csv) and also by trying to import an Outlook profile which you can do in Thunderbird. Everything went well except for the contacts, bloody disaster,

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ditto on that!!!

Dannydet said:

No

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Is there a complicated way?

Eleven Forum just showed this when I posted the above (#5):

Any reason behind the 7-second rule?

jro11 said:

Eleven Forum just showed this when I posted the above (#5):
View attachment 124658
Any reason behind the 7-second rule?

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It’s to prevent spam.

Re csv, I believe, it’s all about how you map the contacts before exporting the csv from Outlook. I’ve never bothered to look how Thunderbird maps contacts to try and export the contacts from Outlook correctly.