Windows Contacts is a

contact manager A contact manager is a software program that enables users to easily store and find contact information, such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers. They are contact-centric databases that provide a fully integrated approach to tracking all in ...

that is included in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

, and

Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...

. It replaced but retains most of the functionality of

Windows Address Book ''Windows Address Book'' was a component of Microsoft Windows that lets users keep a single list of contacts that can be shared by multiple programs. It is most commonly used by Outlook Express. It was introduced with Internet Explorer 3 in 1996 an ...

and worked with

Windows Live Mail Windows Live Mail (formerly named Windows Live Mail Desktop, code-named Elroy) was a freeware email client from Microsoft. It is the successor to Windows Mail in Windows Vista, which was the successor to Outlook Express in Windows XP and Windows ...

and the Vista version of

Windows Mail Mail (formerly Windows Mail) is an email client developed by Microsoft and included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. The main function of Mail is sending and receiving email. It is available as the successor to Outlook Express, whi ...

. Windows Contacts uses an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

-based schema format. Each contact appears as an individual file, in which custom information including pictures can be stored. Window Contacts features

extensibility Extensibility is a software engineering and systems design principle that provides for future growth. Extensibility is a measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensions can be th ...

APIs for integration with other applications and for storing custom information. The legacy format and the open standards (

vCard vCard, also known as VCF (Virtual Contact File), is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards can be attached to e-mail messages, sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, NFC or ...

) and ( CSV) are also supported.

Features

*Windows Contacts is implemented as a

special folder On Microsoft Windows, a special folder is a folder that is presented to the user through an interface as an abstract concept instead of an absolute folder path. (The synonymous term shell folder is sometimes used instead.) Special folders make ...

. It is in the

Start Menu The Start menu is a graphical user interface element used in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 and in other operating systems. It provides a central launching point for computer programs and performing other tasks in the Windows shell. It is name ...

of Windows Vista and can be run in Windows 7 and Windows 10 by searching for 'Contacts' (or 'wab.exe') in the Start Menu. Contacts can be stored in folders and groups. *It can import

, CSV, WAB and

LDIF The LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) is a standard plain text data interchange format for representing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory content and update requests. LDIF conveys directory content as a set of records, on ...

formats. *It can export in vCard 2.1 and CSV formats. Users can right-click a contact to quickly convert it to vCard format and send it to anyone. *It can print contacts in ''Memo'', ''Business Card'', and ''Phone List'' formats. *Because contacts are stored in the Contacts folder simply as individual files, they’re just another data type in the operating system that can be indexed and searched by

Windows Search Windows Search (also known as Instant Search) is a content index desktop search platform by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista as a replacement for both the previous Indexing Service of Windows 2000 and the optional MSN Desktop Search for Wind ...

. Individual contacts can be quickly accessed from the Start menu search text box. *

People A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...

, the contact manager for Outlook.com can store its information in the Windows Contacts folder if the option to encrypt it is unchecked in

Windows Live Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger ser ...

. Whenever contacts in Messenger are updated, they'll be updated in Windows Contacts as well. This feature however only works up to Windows Live Messenger 8.5. Windows Contacts synchronization is not supported in Windows Live Messenger 9.0. *Windows Contacts exposes APIs for creating new contacts, reading and writing in an existing contact, adding a "Label" in the form of a

URI Uri may refer to: Places * Canton of Uri, a canton in Switzerland * Úri, a village and commune in Hungary * Uri, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province * Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, a town in India * Uri (island), an island off Malakula Islan ...

to a "Property" or a "Property" to a "Contact", API for synchronizing devices with Windows Contacts.Programming Windows Contacts

Outlook Express Export Bug

There is a known problem when exporting the Windows Address Book () files to another PC. If the user has contacts organized into folders, this folder structure will not be preserved when the WAB file is imported. All contacts will be preserved, however, leaving some with a considerable task of manually reconstructing the folders and moving addresses back into their rightful places. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249670 A solution for Windows versions still using WAB files as their address book is to copy, not export/import, the WAB files to their correct location. This often preserves the folder structure. Unfortunately, in Windows Live Mail this does not work as WLM doesn't use WAB.

References

External links

About Windows Contacts and the XML Format
{{Windows Components

Contacts Contact lenses, or simply contacts, are thin lenses placed directly on the surface of the eyes. Contact lenses are ocular prosthetic devices used by over 150 million people worldwide, and they can be worn to correct vision or for cosmetic ...

Features

Outlook Express Export Bug

See also

References

External links