Thursday, March 6, 2008

How to Import Contacts?

Selecting the Import Contacts option launches a wizard that lets you import your contacts from Outlook and the Outlook Express Address Book. The import process does not require that you have Outlook or Outlook Express actively running.
If you’re using Windows, follow these steps to import contacts from Outlook (steps for importing on the Mac are covered next):
  1. Select whether you want to import your contacts from Outlook, or the Outlook Express Address Book, or both. When the import process is about to start, Microsoft Outlook pops up a window and tells you that another program is trying to access your email addresses stored in Outlook.
  2. Select the Allow Access check box and then set the duration of allowed access to, say, 10 minutes. While Skype is importing names from Outlook, it also searches the Skype central repository to see whether any of the people who are listed in your Outlook contacts list are already registered users on Skype. At the end of its search, it provides you a list of potential matches.
  3. Review the Skype profile of your potential matches and select the names you want included. When Skype finds Outlook contacts to be imported that have email addresses and are not already on your Contacts list, Skype asks you to select any of those contacts you would like to invite to join Skype.
  4. Click Finish to complete the import process.
You can always re-import your Outlook contacts without worrying that you will create duplicate entries in your Skype Contacts list.
Importing on the Mac works much the same as it does on Windows:
  1. On the Mac platform, choose Contacts➪Import Contacts. The Import Contacts window appears.
  2. Select the various data sources and type of information you want to import.
When you import contacts with versions of Skype for Mac earlier than 1.5, be aware of the following caveats:
  • You can import phone numbers only from the system Address Book.
  • telephone numbers appearing in the Address Book must begin with the international plus sign (+) prefix in order to be imported.
  • The only information that gets imported is phone numbers. No other general contact information gets imported.
When you import contacts with version 1.5 of Skype for Mac:
  • You can specify whether you want to import contacts from the system Address Book, Microsoft Entourage, or both.
  • You can restrict the import to phone numbers only.
  • You are not restricted to importing phone numbers starting with a plus sign (+) prefix.

No comments: