Import Contacts to Outlook 2016 From Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo.

Read time 9 minutes

Typically, professionals tend to have multiple email accounts to share information based on their personal as well as professional requirements. Sometimes, it is quite evident that a user may require to retrieve data from one of their email accounts and use it to the one he/she is currently working on. If you are using multiple email accounts on different email client platforms, it becomes difficult to move some specific data from one platform to another.

Let us consider a situation where a user handles email accounts on four different emailing platforms, say Outlook primarily, and three others on Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail for personal or recreational purposes. While working on the primary email client, i.e., Outlook, the user found out that he/she needs to retrieve details of a contact saved on a different email platform. How will he move contacts from one platform to another?

The most popular method to migrate contacts from web-clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail to Outlook 2016 is to export the contacts to a CSV file. The resultant CSV is then used by Outlook to import the required contacts.

In this writeup, we will discuss the steps to import contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail to Outlook platform. But first, we need to know how we can export contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail to a CSV file.

Export Contacts from Gmail to a CSV

The process to export Gmail contacts to a CSV file is quite easy. Gmail itself provides a direct option to export contacts to a CSV file that can be download easily via a single click.

Follow the steps given below to export Gmail contacts to a CSV file:

1. Invoke Gmail on any convenient browser of your choice and enter the credentials to log-in to your account.
2. Go to Contacts; then, on the left-hand side panel, you will see the Export button. Select the contact you wish to export and click on the Export button.
3. Select Outlook CSV under Export as an option and click on the Export button.

The CSV file containing your required Gmail contacts gets downloaded on your system.

Just like Gmail, Yahoo mail services also provide Export functionalities to export contacts directly to a CSV file. Follow the steps given below to download the CSV file for Yahoo! platform.

1. Launch Yahoo! on any compatible web browser and log-in via the credentials.
2. Click on the Contacts icon located at the extreme right of the interface.
3. Click on the Actions menu icon and select Export CSV from the drop-down menu.

As soon as you click on the Export (CSV) option, the required CSV file containing Yahoo! contacts gets downloaded on your system.

Microsoft’s Outlook.com mail services (aka Hotmail) is yet another popular email platform developed and managed by the Microsoft community.

Microsoft offers a more diverse range of features and functionalities to its users; not only you utilize the free-email facility provided under Microsoft’s Outlook.com, but you can also get access to features like Xbox, One drive, Office Suite, etc.

To export your contacts from Outlook.com (aka Hotmail) into a CSV file, follow these steps:

1. Sign into your Hotmail/Outlook account.
2. Click on the People ( ) icon to view your Outlook contacts.
3. Select the required contacts you want to export into a CSV, or in case you want to export the entire contact list into a CSV, check the All Contacts checkbox. Then, click on the Manage drop-down located at the extreme right of the interface.
4. From the drop-down menu, select Export contacts.
5. Click Export.

As soon as you click on the Export button, a CSV containing the required contacts gets downloaded to your system.

Now, we will use Outlook to import contacts from one of the downloaded CSV files. Suppose you want to import contacts from the Yahoo! mail platform. All you must do is: Launch Outlook 2016 and import the CSV file containing your Yahoo! mail contacts.

To perform the import operation more precisely, follow the steps given below:

1. Launch MS Outlook, go to File >> Open & Export >> Import/Export.
2. In the Import and Export Wizard, select the Import from another program or file option and click Next.
3. The next window allows you to select the file type, select Comma Separated Values as the file type, and click Next.
4. Browse to provide the source path of the file you wish to import and click Next. Also, you can choose the appropriate option to manage duplicate items in your data.
5. Select the destination folder to save the required data and click Next.
6. Click on the Finish button to execute the import process. Depending on the size of the contact list, it may take a while to perform the process thoroughly.

Once you completed the above steps, go back to your Outlook contacts interface, and check whether the contacts are imported successfully or not. In case the required contacts didn’t show up in the desired folder, the chances are that either you have misplaced the data into a wrong folder or the PST in which the contacts have been imported contains errors or corruption issues.

Wrapping Up

The most common reason for the loss of data in Outlook is reported to be the corruption issues residing in PST files. Corruption in PST makes the data completely inaccessible and may get you in a situation where you must seek external help to fix the issue. There are, however, manual as well as automated techniques to fix corruption in PST, Inbox Repair, aka ScanPST.exe is a free utility provided by Microsoft to deal with corruption issues in PST files. However, you may have to perform several iterations of the repair process to get the issue sorted. Inbox Repair fixes only low-level corruption issues. If your PST is severely corrupt, then only an efficient third-party repair tool can help you recover the file.

Kernel for Outlook PST Repair is one of the most recommended tools to fix PST files issues. It retains the complete data without hampering the confidentiality and integrity of data. Moreover, the tool allows users to save the recovered PST in formats like MBOX, DBX, MSG, EML, HTML, etc.

Here is how the default interface of Kernel for Outlook PST Tool looks like: