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Old December 14th, 2006, 10:10 AM posted to microsoft.public.outlook.contacts
Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]
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Posts: 9,440
Default Phone Sync. wipes out Contacts - Archive doesn't back up!

You can archive Contacts if you want to. Outlook just won't do it
automatically. I've never seen anyone who would expect it to. How in the
world is Outlook supposed to know when a Contact has expired?

--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"David NF Harris" wrote in message
...
Thnak you. How very strange. A quick poll of colleagues here says 90% of
them
consider that Contacts definitely do "expire"!! In fact I keep old copies
of
Contacts for just that reason - not wanted currently, but occasionally
needed
for reference.
Obviously Microsoft saw it differently, but I am astonished that they
didn't
offer you the choice of what you want to archive.
At least I now know!

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

Archiving is moving older data to a different file. Since Contacts never
"expire," Contacts would never be archived. Only time sensitive items
such
as messages would be archived, depending on your settings.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"David NF Harris" wrote in
message
...
Yes, that's clear - thank you. I do feel Outlook should make it clear
that
Exporting only saves some of the data - it's the first I'd heard of it.

And what is 'archiving' if it's not backup? Is some data lost?

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

Backing up simply means creating a faithful copy of your data so you
can
restore it. Just copying your Outlook data file in Windows Explorer is
the
easiest and most reliable way to do this. Exporting your data from
Outlook
creates an altered source of your data that is often misplaced, lost,
or
corrupted because people often do so incorrectly. Exporting to a
different
format from Outlook's native format loses even more data.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"David NF Harris" wrote in
message
...
Could you clarify your definition of 'backing up'? There may be some
specific
technical use of the term that was I was not aware of, which would
help. I
suspect most lay people would consider almost any form of
duplicating
the
data in a different place to be 'backing up'. Interestingly our IT
dept.
will
only talk about 'archiving' our data, which they certainly consider
to
be
'backing up''!

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

Exporting is not backing up either.
Just make a copy of your Outlook data file and keep it in a safe
place.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"David NF Harris" wrote
in
message
...
Oh. They seem the same to me, so no, no "backup".
Since reading various other posts I have exported the laboriously
renewed
Contacts as a .pst file, but it's difficult to know if it has
worked
properly
since you can only open it within Outlook (AFAIK). Can't export
as
CSV
as
the
company hasn't installed the converters (and won't for some
reason).

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

Did you ever back up your data? Archiving and backup are not the
same.

--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"David NF Harris"
wrote
in
message
...
I wished to copy my Contacts to my new phone. Carefully
Archived
Outlook
(several times to different names). Synchronise, and the Empty
phone
wipes
out Contacts (but not Calendar).
Ok, back up from Archive I think to myself. But it seems that
the
ONLY
folder Archive does NOT back up is Contacts - can't find any
anywhere.
Any help possible?