Diary, Import Contacts from Outlook

 

There are many different versions of Microsoft Outlook, but the principle for importing them is always similar…

·        Step 1 - In Outlook select the option to export to an Excel file

·        Step 2 - Import the Excel file into Durell

 

Typically this will be a one-off process, where for each member of staff you load their contacts into Durell. Your Durell system will then contain everyone’s contacts, and become the single (multi-user) source of contacts for your whole office. You’ll then be able to use Durell’s “Address Sets” to structure these into, for example, “Address Book, Sally”, “Address Book, Fred”, “Address Book, Solicitors”, etc – see “Clients, Using Address Sets” and “Clients, Copying, Deleting and Moving Many Records”).

 

Step 1 - Export from Outlook

On the menu line in Outlook (top left) select…

·        “File” then “Import and Export”

·        “Export to a file” (this is the action, as illustrated below)

·        “Microsoft Excel” (this is the type of file to export)

·        “Contacts” (this is the folder to export)

·        Save the file with an obvious name like “Contacts” in the root of your local hard disk (e.g. save as C:\contacts.xls)

 

 

Step 2 - Import to Durell

Starting from Durell’s Main Menu…

·        Click the “Setup” button

·        Double-click the word “Import” in the table on the right hand side

·        Use the “Browse” button to find the file, ensuring “Files of type”, bottom centre, is set to “Excel (*.xls)”, as shown below

 

 

·        Select the target address set, such as “Clients, Individual”, as shown below

o       Leave the “Import data from…” set to “Excel spreadsheet”

o       Leave the tick in “First row has field names”

·        Click on “Connect”, and the “Preview” window, as shown below, should then display the first few records

 

 

·        Scroll right until you see “E-mail Display Name” (as shown above) and click the yellow field below it

·        Click the drop-down that appears and select “Address line 1”, which will then appear in the yellow field

·        Click the yellow field below “E-mail Address”, click the drop-down that appears and select “E-mail”

·        Scroll back to the left, click the yellow field below “Other Phone”, click the drop-down that appears and select “Record”

·        Similarly match  Outlook’s “Last Name” with Durell’s “Search Name”

·        Similarly match other Outlook data fields with Durell ones, as per the table below…

 

Outlook Field name

Durell Field Name

 

 

Other Phone

Record

Last Name

Search name

E-mail Display Name

Address line1

Home Street

Address line2

Home Street 2

Address line3

Home Street 3

Address line4

Home City

Address line5

Home State

Address line6

Home Postal Code

Post code

Home Phone

Phone (home)

Business Phone

Phone (work)

Mobile Phone

Phone (mobile)

E-mail Address

E-Mail

 

·        You do not need to associate all the Outlook data fields with equivalent Durell ones

·        When done, click “Save setup”, then click the “Import” button to load the data

 

Create a Permanent Link Between Outlook Contacts and Durell Clients (i.e. for subsequent re-import)

Use the Outlook field called “Other Phone” to hold your Durell client record numbers (see “Diary, Export Contacts to Outlook”), then…

·        when an Outlook contact has a number in the field called “Other Phone” (and provided that field has been associated with the Durell “Record” field) then the Outlook contact data will update the Durell client having that record number

·        if you don’t associate an Outlook field with the Durell “Record” one, then each Outlook contact will form a new record in Durell

·        even if you do associate an Outlook field with the Durell “Record” one, a new Durell client record will still be created for each Outlook contact with a blank value in its “Other Phone” field

 

Re-use Saved Set-Ups

When you click the “Save setup” button Durell automatically saves all the associations (e.g. Outlook’s “Other Phone” equals Durell’s “Record”) for the current file name (e.g. “contacts.xls”). Provided you use exactly the same import file name the associations will appear automatically the next time you click the “Connect” button.