Converting from AOL to Comcast/Outlook Express

[Jim Cohen]

Am trying to dump AOL, but finding that they make even that difficult by providing no utility for getting your AOL address book into Outlook Express. Well, there IS a utility, but it copied over only the NAMES of the people in my AOL address book, and not their E-mail addresses!

Has anyone else done this successfully? Is there a way without having to retype all the addresses and make a bunch of typo mistakes? AOL "Live Help" tells me there is NO way to export the AOL address book into Outlook Express (only vice versa)!!!

Halp!

[Ken Lang]

AOL. The only legal virus on the net IMHO.

[Ron Page]

Jim,

I'm not familiar with AOL specifically, but usually those export tools allow you to check boxes to select which fields to export. See if there isn't something in properties or options configuration fields that allows you to add the e-mail address. There just has to be something there unless it really is intended to be totally useless.

If you can get it to export as a Windows Address Book (.wab) then I think Outlook Express with import it easily.

Getting all your saved e-mail messages will be more difficult. In going from one computer to another, both using OE, I found that I had to create the identity, create an account using each identity (change to the target identity to create the account), and then I just selected and dragged all the files from my old identities (on another disk) to the new identity folders; that preserved all my mail folders, such as SteelGuitar.

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HagFan

[Skip Cole]

I have AOL and am about to change to another ISP, just can't decide which one. I'm glad you mentioned the problem of transferring your emails and address' to another ISP, hate to lose all my stuff. I've heard stories of how aggressive the AOL bunch is and how difficult it is to part company with them.

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"I Can Only Imagine" Mercy Me

[Bill Ford]

Not AOL, but I copy/pasted all my email addresses to notepad for safekeeping,then saved it on a floppy. When I changed ISPs, I copy/pasted them to my new ad book,biggest problem, you have to install one at a time.

Bill

[Jim Smith]

Here's an article that explains a few ways to do it: http://blog.kevindonahue.com/archives/2004/03/convert_aol_add.php

For AOL 8 or 9, there is an AOL utility called "Synch". For older versions, it uses a free utility, AOLeave, from http://www.aoleave.com/

[Jim Cohen]

Jim, if this works, I'll owe you two beers...(well, one is for me... LOL)