Backup and Synchronize Contacts

This morning, I was taking a look at my system for backing up my files. Everything seems pretty much under control except for my contacts. It seems that I have many different contact systems and they are all completely independent. Here is a list:

• Windows Contacts: (Start -> All Programs -> Windows Contacts) These appear to be completely obsolete, but I don’t dare to delete them. Actually, I probably will.
• Windows Live Contacts on my desktop system.
• Windows Live Contacts on my laptop system.
• Contacts in Thunderbird.
• Contacts in G Mail.
• My on-line address book.

Remember that mostly, I just want to back up the contact list, but it would also be nice if there could be some sort of synchronization between some of them.

To make matters worse, Microsoft tends to hide all the contact information deep within directory structures that it also makes inaccessible. What a pain.

So, I did an internet search and what I found was that I was supposed to add Windows Live Messenger to tie all this stuff together. Just what I need: another database, but at least this one is in the cloud and would synchronize between my desktop and laptop systems. Not perfect, but it meets my minimum requirements.

 

Windows Live Messenger

Well, I am still not sure exactly what Microsoft Live Messenger actually is, but I think it is Microsoft’s answer to Facebook. Whatever it is, I would just as soon not have it on my systems, but I am willing if it will do the job. The websites extolling its virtues promised to synchronize with Windows Live Mail contacts, so I decided to give it a try. I downloaded and installed it. This may not actually have been necessary, but I did it.

And it did not synchronize with Windows Live Mail. I thought that the problem could be that I had different account names for Windows Live, so I created a new Windows Live account using the email account from at which I read my email messages. That made no difference.

Eventually, I think I found the trick.

• Open Windows Live Mail.
• Click Contacts in the lower left of the window.
• That changes the ribbon bar at the top of the window.
• At the right side of the ribbon, there is an icon. On my system, it offered me the option to Sign In. I did using my Windows Live ID. I think this was the key to synchronizing.
• At this point, the icon changed to show my name and a drop down list which allows log out, change user and similar things.
• I also clicked Clean Up Contacts. I don’t know if this was necessary, but it was probably a good idea.
• I then went to my laptop, opened Windows Live Mail and logged into that program as well. I clicked Clean Up Contacts and the contacts appeared there. I had not installed Windows Live Messenger on that system.

I also note that with Contacts selected in Windows Live Mail, there are options on the ribbon to import or export my contact list. While I have not yet thought of a way to make this automatic, it would offer me a means of saving my contacts to a file that could be backed up.

So, I guess this solves my problem. It is not perfect, but it does seem to meet my immediate concerns.