[VistaRookie]

Have Vista Ultimate and I don't like "Contacts"
I'd rather have my old Address Book from OE.
Anyone find a hack to replace Contacts with the Address Book?

[davehc]

Probably irrelevant, but what is it you don't like?

[VistaRookie]

Probably irrelevant, but what is it you don't like?

1) It was dedicated to OE.

2) I used to have 2 lists...call them primary and secondary emails. Primary were ones used everyday. Now have one huge list of emails and have to scroll and pick the right one for everyday use. Many people have multiple email addys and it makes it a chore to figure out the right one. I moved the ones for the secondary list into a sub-folder. That works to see just the primary list while in Mail. However, when you open a new email and click to enter an addy in the 'To' field, the whole bunch shows up again.

My feeling is MS fixed a lot of stuff that wasn't broken.
I saw suggestions to try Thunderbird....might.

[davehc]

Sorry. I'm not clear on your complaint. You can create as many "groups" as you like with Contacts.

[VistaRookie]

Sorry. I'm not clear on your complaint. You can create as many "groups" as you like with Contacts.

Oh great! I went back and attempted making a 2nd group because of your post and lost all my list of secondary emails! LOL (not blaming you)(I'll get them back, no problem).

OK, Dave...I give up, how do you make a 2nd list of emails using Contacts? Step-by-step please. Bear in mind, this is not a group that will receive identical emails. Just a 2nd list of emails not used often.

[davehc]

Darn. I,m sorry. I have been using Windows Live Mail for a long time now, and my information referred to that program. I totally overlooked that you were using the built in Windows Mail!
Why not download and install it? It's free and much better than Windows Mail. It has all the usual import facilities from Windows Mail.
In that program, as I said, it is the simplest operation in the world to make new groups. Like yourself, I have one for my personal friends and another for certain business contacts.etc.
Open it up, open contacts and the rest of the operation is a breeze.

[VistaRookie]

OK...thanks for the help and suggestion about Windows Live, Dave.

I am going to consider all options - mostly, if anyone knows about a hack for Windows Address Book, let me know.

[VistaRookie]

Apparently both Vista Contacts and Outlook Express' Windows Address Book have the same filename for the EXE. There is a huge difference is size between the Vista WAB.exe (504KB) and the OE WAB.exe (42KB). A surprise (to me), if you click the OE WAB.exe, it opens the same Contacts Window that would open if you clicked the correct Vista WAB.exe.

Anyone with suggestions of things to try to get the OE WAB hacked into Vista?

[VistaRookie]

A work around for what I consider a defect in Windows Mail/Contacts.

If you have a large list of email addresses and simply want to maintain 2 lists, a prime list and one with people not used often, I have not found anyway to create that in Contacts.

But what you can do is export name and email address fields from Contacts into a CSV file and open it with Notepad (I renamed the extension TXT so that I didn't have to fight with Notepad). Then copy all of the names/addresses and paste them into an email from Windows Mail. I then sent that email to myself and now all the addresses are live links and I can open that email for anyone on there, click on their name and a new email opens with their name in the TO: field. Once you have created the email, you no longer need the CSV file, so that can be deleted. Also, remove the names you put into the email from the list of Contacts by deleting them so that only your prime list remains there. Now you have 2 separate lists, prime one in Contacts and secondary list in that email. I store it in a special folder so that I know where it is when I need it.