Importing contacts from Yahoo to Windows 10 "People" app

A friend has a Yahoo webmail account. She can access it via a browser and
this displays messages and contacts fine - except that it is painfully slow
at times. I've seen suggestions that on Windows 10 you should instead use
the Mail app to read and send Yahoo email. I've set this up fine, apart from
one thing:

How do you import the Yahoo Contacts list into the People app of Windows 10
which is used by Windows 10 Mail?

Yahoo can export the list of contacts either as a series of VCF files or
else as a single CSV file - both are bog-standard ways of
exporting/importing contacts. But I can't find anything in the People app
for importing contacts from either of those formats. There is an "Add
Account" option (as there is for the Mail program itself) but unlike Mail it
doesn't offer the option of Yahoo; otherwise there is the implication that
maybe Add Account can connect to a webmail account and grab the contacts.

Has anyone solved this problem? Surely any contacts program worth its salt
has a way of importing (and exporting) contacts in one of the standard file
formats. You could do it with Outlook Express (XP), Windows Mail (Vista) and
Windows Live Mail (Win 7) so surely they hadn't removed the capability in
the corresponding Windows 10 mail/contacts program.

NY wrote:
A friend has a Yahoo webmail account. She can access it via a browser
and this displays messages and contacts fine - except that it is
painfully slow at times. I've seen suggestions that on Windows 10 you
should instead use the Mail app to read and send Yahoo email. I've set
this up fine, apart from one thing:

How do you import the Yahoo Contacts list into the People app of Windows
10 which is used by Windows 10 Mail?

Yahoo can export the list of contacts either as a series of VCF files or
else as a single CSV file - both are bog-standard ways of
exporting/importing contacts. But I can't find anything in the People
app for importing contacts from either of those formats. There is an
"Add Account" option (as there is for the Mail program itself) but
unlike Mail it doesn't offer the option of Yahoo; otherwise there is the
implication that maybe Add Account can connect to a webmail account and
grab the contacts.

Has anyone solved this problem? Surely any contacts program worth its
salt has a way of importing (and exporting) contacts in one of the
standard file formats. You could do it with Outlook Express (XP),
Windows Mail (Vista) and Windows Live Mail (Win 7) so surely they hadn't
removed the capability in the corresponding Windows 10 mail/contacts
program.

The information is probably supposed to go into the People App.
But with help pages that are this terse, who really knows.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...the-people-app

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...the-people-app

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...d-set-up-email

"Where are my contacts?

When you add an account, either through the Mail and Calendar apps
or other social media apps, any contacts associated with those
accounts will show up in the People app. Find the People app by
typing People in the search box on the taskbar."

I think there is some standard for pulling the contacts (CardDAV/CalDAV)
from existing "server-side" email systems. Someone using some POP3
thing with locally maintained contacts, locally stored emails,
probably need not apply.

It's probably not an oversight, more of a snub.

You can get some idea how Rocket Scientists do it, here.
We live in a Cloud world, setting up Apps from one
cloud, to pull stuff from other clouds. If you
don't like Clouds, don't use Win10 Mail/People?Calendar

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7166996

Skimming through this chapter, I don't see file importing
as an option. But at least this chapter has pictures :-)
This is actually pretty good.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=lRd...rosoft&f=false

You could

1) Find a webmail system that supports importing contacts.
2) Import the contacts into it.
3) Now, open the spiffy Microsoft Mail/People/calender, enter
just the account details of the new webmail account, and
that will pull down the contacts.

Just a guess. Maybe our resident email guy (Winston) will
dream up a better method.

Using a CSV file (from a developer point of view),
would be so "1960's". Their intention is probably
to support only cloud oriented approaches to things.
If your "info to be sucked isn't in the Cloud, it
ain't goin". That would be my guess as to the design intent.

And it would be nice, if there was a Microsoft web page,
that stated that very thing. What the design intent is.
So we don't have to guess.

As a general principle, the design is intended to help
them, not to help you.

As for the Microsoft help pages, they *insist* on providing
no images of anything. They can have me download one 3.5GB
OS file after another, but they refuse to provide a 20KB GIF
with an image of the dialog needed to do stuff. I presume this
is intended to reduce "maintenance time" for web page
support staff. No content = almost no time needed to update the info.
The help pages on university IT sites are better for this, as
they usually provide a GIF-decorated recipe thread.

*******

OK, if you have a Microsoft Account (MSA), you can do this.
This is a channel to go from CSV to CardDAV (stored at Microsoft).
Since the CSV is now associated with your MSA, it can be
synced to things.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...8-dc9c3da443bc

"We can’t import contacts directly to the People app from a CSV file.
However, if you visit http://people.live.com/ you can import the
contacts through "manage" option. You can refer these steps:

a) Visit http://people.live.com/ and login with the same
Microsoft ID that you have synced with the People app.

b) Click on "Manage" on the top and click on "Add people".

c) Click on "import from a file".

d) Browse and import the CSV file from your computer.

Note: It might take some time for the contacts to be updated
in the People app in your computer."

HTH,
Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
NY wrote:
How do you import the Yahoo Contacts list into the People app of Windows
10 which is used by Windows 10 Mail?

Has anyone solved this problem? Surely any contacts program worth its
salt has a way of importing (and exporting) contacts in one of the
standard file formats. You could do it with Outlook Express (XP), Windows
Mail (Vista) and Windows Live Mail (Win 7) so surely they hadn't removed
the capability in the corresponding Windows 10 mail/contacts program.

The information is probably supposed to go into the People App.
But with help pages that are this terse, who really knows.


Many thanks for all this help. I'll read it in a bit more detail later on
and try it out on my friend's Win 10 PC. I'm still on Win 7 and will remain
so for as long as the PC stays alive. And if I'm forced to go to Win 10, I
will use Windows Live Mail (or Thunderbird) - I avoid minimalist Metro apps
like the plague.

I agree that MS help pages contravene the Trades Description Act - they very
rarely actually help: they go into minute detail about the trivialities that
you already know, leading you out into the middle of the big swimming pool,
and then say "right, you're on your own now" :-(

I found a Google link that was labelled "People App for Windows 10" and it
took me to a page for the app on Win 8, where importing from CSV/VCF *does*
seem to be allowed.

NY wrote:

How do you import the Yahoo Contacts list into the People app of Windows
10 which is used by Windows 10 Mail?


https://people.live.com/

Connect the Yahoo account
or
Choose the Import option, select Yahoo and follow the instructions.

--
....winston
msft mvp consumer apps