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Secure your most important data from a disaster and backup your contacts!

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2016, 2019/365.

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Contacts Backup.docx
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Quick reference

Contacts Backup

Secure your most important data from a disaster and backup your contacts!

When to use

More often than necessary, we hear about smartphone synchronizing that ruins, rather than secures, your contacts file. By pre-emptively running a backup, you will be a step ahead of a potential loss of data.

Instructions to export and backup contacts

  • Click the File Ribbon.

  • Click Options.

  • Choose Advanced.

  • Locate the Export section.

  • Then click Export.

  • Choose Export to a File and click Next.

  • Choose a file type.

  • Comma Separated Values is compatible to Excel or Outlook.
  • Outlook Data File (.pst) is compatible to Outlook only.
  • Select the Folder to Export from your list.
  • Outlook auto-names the file Backup.pst
    1. You should rename it to Contacts Backup.pst
    2. You should click BROWSE and store this file somewhere safe on your computer or on a USB removable drive.
       
  • Click Finish.

  • Tips:
    • Make backup files individually for email, calendar, and contacts. Then, in case that you need to restore just contacts, you won’t overwrite months of new emails with old ones from a combined backup file.
    • Name your backup files accordingly and include the date in the name, i.e.:
      Email backup, 05-05-19
      Calendar backup, 05-07-19
      Contacts backup, 06-08-19

Instructions to import and restore contacts

  • Click the File Ribbon.

  • Click Options.

  • Choose Advanced.

  • Locate the Export section.

  • Then click Export.

  • Choose Import from another program or File and click Next.

 

  • Choose a file type - pick the same type you chose when exporting.​​​​​​

  • Comma Separated Values is compatible to Excel or Outlook.
  • Outlook Data File (.pst) is compatible to Outlook only.
  • Click Browse ... and find your file.
  • Select which folder to import from (should be the only folder unless you have done many of these.)

  • Click Finish. 
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  • 00:04 All right, I want to show you how to do a contacts backup,
  • 00:08 also known as exporting contacts, and then re-importing, should the time come.
  • 00:14 Every once in a while, things go badly with our smartphones, right?
  • 00:16 And what we do is synchronize.
  • 00:18 For some freak reason,
  • 00:19 our contacts vanish, either on our phone or on our computer.
  • 00:23 So, the way to not panic is to have a backup ready, all right?
  • 00:26 So that's what we're going to do.
  • 00:27 Rest assured on the reference guide that this lesson, our step by step instructions
  • 00:31 and also the exercise file for this lesson is you doing your own back up, all right?
  • 00:35 So let's go ahead and do this.
  • 00:37 The magic is on the file ribbon, so right up here on the top left,
  • 00:40 I'm going to click on file.
  • 00:41 We hit the button, we have an option that says options,
  • 00:46 click this, when we go into options, notice on the left hand side,
  • 00:50 we have an option that says advanced because this is absolutely advanced.
  • 00:54 If you'll scroll down just a little bit, you'll see the exports section.
  • 00:57 Notice the export has a back and forth arrow but over on the right, it only
  • 01:01 says export, rest assured, when it's time to import, you're going to hit export.
  • 01:06 I wish it said export import but it doesn't, so fine,
  • 01:08 I'll hit the export because that's what I'm doing right now anyway, export.
  • 01:13 Now it opens up and it defaults by highlighting import,
  • 01:16 well, get your eyes up to the top, we can export rss feeds, not interested,
  • 01:21 export to a file, absolutely interested.
  • 01:24 Those are my only two export options and am going to take the second one.
  • 01:29 Go ahead and click Next.
  • 01:31 Wants to know, do you want to export to a comma separated value?
  • 01:33 Well, if am bringing it into Excel or if I'm uploading my contact list to some user
  • 01:39 platform, some website platform, they usually want a CSV separated file.
  • 01:45 In this case, no, I want the outlook data file, which is oddly called a .PST.
  • 01:50 I don't even know what that stands for.
  • 01:52 It doesn't really matter.
  • 01:53 It says outlook data file.
  • 01:55 That is the export I want to use.
  • 01:57 Because when I bring it back in, I want it to go readily and nicely into Outlook.
  • 02:02 Hit Next.
  • 02:03 Now, choose which file.
  • 02:05 I can back up my inbox, I can back up my calendar, I can back up my contacts.
  • 02:10 Notice down below, it says include sub folders, if I open up this arrow,
  • 02:14 you can see my sub folders.
  • 02:15 Yes, I want to include everything in this.
  • 02:18 Maybe I can hit filter, I want to filter down to just export certain zip codes, or
  • 02:22 certain state names or city names.
  • 02:23 I could do that, I don't want to but I could.
  • 02:26 Click Next.
  • 02:28 And now, this is the fist time you see the word backup.
  • 02:31 It's a default file name.
  • 02:32 I'm going to leave it at that but
  • 02:34 I'm certainly going to control where I land this thing.
  • 02:36 So I'm going to hit Browse, and I want this to land maybe out on my desktop.
  • 02:41 So, I will hit my Desktop, I'll leave it named backup, I'll hit OK, here we go.
  • 02:47 I'm going to go ahead and hit the Finish button.
  • 02:49 When I click Finish, it wants me to password protect this.
  • 02:54 For this example, I'm not going to waste time doing that.
  • 02:56 It's just an example.
  • 02:58 Generally, absolutely.
  • 02:59 I'm going to password protect my contacts.
  • 03:01 I don't want anyone to hack me and get my contact list.
  • 03:04 Anyway, at this point, I'm going to go ahead and hit OK.
  • 03:06 No password is entered, so I won't need one to re import, hit OK.
  • 03:09 It happens so fast.
  • 03:10 If I had hundreds, you would see little pieces of paper flying across my screen.
  • 03:14 That is not the case.
  • 03:16 All right, let's see if this work.
  • 03:18 I'm going to literary Ctrl+A on my contacts and delete.
  • 03:22 I just deleted my contacts.
  • 03:24 Let's just say synchronize happened.
  • 03:26 I open this, no contacts.
  • 03:27 Panic or remember, wait a minute.
  • 03:30 Didn't I back up those things up?
  • 03:31 Let's reverse this process.
  • 03:32 Click on File.
  • 03:34 Click on Actions.
  • 03:35 Click on Advanced.
  • 03:37 Click on Export, even though I want to import, I'm going to click on export and
  • 03:41 look it, import from another program, from an OPML,
  • 03:46 from an RSS feed or from, let's see.
  • 03:50 I want it to say a .PST file but it doesn't show me.
  • 03:53 So I'll just say from another program or file, that's fine.
  • 03:56 Hit Next, there's what I'm looking for, PST.
  • 04:01 Now, that will match a file type of the one I saved.
  • 04:04 Hit Next.
  • 04:05 It wants to find this for me, so I'm going to browse for it.
  • 04:08 I know I dropped it on my desktop, there it is,
  • 04:11 backup.pst, love that name backup, hit Open.
  • 04:15 Hit Next.
  • 04:17 It's going to drop in my outlook data file.
  • 04:20 Include sub folders, hit Finish.
  • 04:23 And go back and check my contacts and magically, there they all are.
  • 04:28 I love this process.
  • 04:29 Please do a backup on all your files.
  • 04:32 Please, please, please, thank you.

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