Contacts: folder size
Ildhund
and all my accounts showed up with messages and so on. Contacts,
too, in a number of Live accounts. I decided to check on my Default
contacts, so selected Stop signing in at [Tools >] Options >
Connection. I opened the contacts window - and there were none. I
know that there were 263 of them before, so why did they not get
migrated along with everything else on install?
I then tried File > Import. There is no option to import from
WLMail. There is for WAB, and another one for 'Address book for
current Windows user'. Ignore the WAB - that's probably empty. Try
'Address book'. Sure enough, it proceeded to import 520 contacts.
Knowing I only have about 260, a cursory glance confirmed that each
one appeared twice.
Another quick check showed that my WAB was not empty, but in fact
contained 260 contacts. So I assume that what I just imported was in
fact my WAB and not my old Default contacts. Damn! How do I get the
right ones into my *new* Default contacts list?
Then I looked at folder sizes. The WAB I had imported from is 148KB.
My old Default contacts folder is 1.6MB - quite an overhead (more
than tenfold). But the new folder in the Windows Live Contacts
folder is 37.2MB - that's about TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY times as big
as the import source! Can this be right? And, if so, what do the
coders have to say for themselves? It's not surprising I'm running
out of space on my C drive!
--
Noel
...winston
Each Live ID and the Default(no Live ID sign-on) contacts has a separate contact folder.
As an example a Default contact list with 3 entries is about 24MB :(
Let's go to the other item..to get all your contacts and properly in the Default account requires a bit of brute force.
A few questions
1. Do these contacts exist in a Live ID without any duplicates and intact ?
2. Are you using more fields in that Live ID than WLM can export ?
When viewing the Contacts in Windows Explorer(show hidden and protected files) each Live ID will have two folders(a main folder and
a shadow folder), the Default will only have one(nothing to shadow).
To determine the correct folder name for each:
Open Regedit
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\Database
- you should see a variety of entries..expand the 'name' column so you can see the path to your Default Contact.
- look in the data field for the name of the Windows Explorer folder the contact data base resides.
- repeat the above to determine the path/folder for the Live ID that holds your contacts.
- You should now have the path and folder name for the Live ID and Default Contact database
If the answer to question (1) and (2) was yes, then copy(don't move) the contacts.edb file from the Live ID's DBStore folder to the
Default Contacts DBStore folder. Also copy that same contacts folder to the Backup\new folder(if present).
Possibly another thing of knowledge value..
The difference in WLM (import/export) vs the Hotmail UI export/import feature.
Export a contact list for a Live ID(not the default) to a csv file in WLM and also in the Hotmail Web UI(export choosign the
Hotmail option, not OE, OL, Google)
- compare the two in Excel. Look at the field headers.
- you should note that WLM does not export as many fields as the Hotmai web UI
- since it can't export all the fields possible in a contact entry(e.g. work mail, other mail) it can't import them either.
....winston
ms-mvp mail
Ildhund
contacts shows this bloat, so if you have a number of Live IDs in
use (like me), then it gets ridiculous. My 'old' Contacts folder is
22MB, the new one over 600MB! At least I could relocate the old one
to an external drive, but I can't see how to relieve my beleaguered
C drive of this burden. Moving the whole %userprofile% causes far
too many other problems...
Now to Default contacts. The answers to your questions are No (I
didn't dare!) and Yes.
Consider the scenario where, in v.12, I used this for my 'little
black book' of very private contacts. They were not migrated during
the upgrade to v.14. They are still there as .Contact files in
%storefolder%/Contacts/Default. I can open a .Contact file with
WLMail (luckily that function wasn't removed*), click on 'Add
contact' and that works - one file at a time.
In the registry, I see the listing of old contacts sources and their
new locations. There is one called C:\Documents and
Settings\Noel\Contacts\Default\ pointing to a new contacts folder.
If I remember rightly (when we went through all this a year or two
ago and wondered what that folder in the XP %userprofile% was for),
then a copy of Default contacts was *not* put there along with
copies of all the others. So could it be that that subkey should be
pointing to the Default folder in %storefolder%? And that if it did,
Default contacts would have migrated? If I ever get a moment, I'll
sift through the install logs to see if there's any clue there.
[Incidentally, this *might* also offer a clue for those who've
complained that contacts imported into Default from WAB are not
found on restart, if that subkey is used to locate them at other
times than program install.]
Anyway, I can't export these without (a) uninstalling v.14, (b)
reinstalling v.12, (c) exporting them to CSV, (d) uninstalling v.12
again, (e) reinstalling v.14 and (f) importing them. That might
conceivably be quicker than adding one contact at a time, but either
way it's a long and laborious job (my little black book is
extensive) for what should be automatic.
--
Noel
* WLMail v.14 will not open encrypted .WindowsLiveContact files,
only unencrypted .Contact ones.
"...winston" <winst...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:eWm35t1d...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
Ildhund
points to a non-existent default contacts folder in XP. It got
re-created on the next start-up, along with another empty 16MB
folder in the Windows Live Contacts folder. I suspect that whoever
wrote the migration code just forgot about the differences between
XP and Vista in this respect. I'll put it down as a bug. If I do a
clean re-install, I'll try copying the files to the Vista-style
folder and see if they get migrated.
Incidentally, v.12 *is* still available for download from MS. I
can't remember which MS site I found the reference on, but anyway,
it's here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA346005-45F6-4D14-A7DC-51E13D11A950&displaylang=en
Since I still have (I'm a squirrel when it comes to throwing stuff
out) the v.12 MSI, I could always use that if I got really pushed.
As it is, I got round the problem by using a spare machine. It would
be fun to try parsing the xml in Excel, but it would need code, I
think; CSV export outputs every field, empty or not, whereas the xml
only contains non-empty ones. Trying to make sense of 1000 entries
of varying extent in a worksheet would be murderous.
[For another bug, how about 'spell-checking doesn't pick up words
run together with a parenthesis', as in 'file(nothing'? ;)]
--
Noel
"...winston" <winst...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:O0XuHOee...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> I echo your concern about the Contact database storage. I don't
> have any suggestions at this time, and I suspect more multiple
> Live
> ID users of WLM will experience a similar.
> Afaik, the only key file is the main contact.edb store for a given
> Live ID is stored in the DBStore folder.
>
> Some additional information:
> - For a given Live ID, one can delete the entire
> contents(files/subfolders) of DBStore and WLM will rebuild it on
> next Live ID
> use.
> - When using the Default Contact(no Live ID signon), if the
> DBStore contents are deleted, the rebuilt will include a blank
> Default
> contact.edb file(nothing to sync with the server)..thus a backup
> should be made and copied back to the recreated DBStore folder.
>
> - Some caution is warranted
> a. if the registry values for a Live ID and the Default are
> deleted, WLM will create new numerical names for the Live
> IDfolders, the Live ID shadow folder, and the Default folder. Thus
> looking in the registry for the correct name is necessary before
> copying any backup(contact.edb)to the newly Default DBStore folder
> to ensure its placed in the correct location.
> b. Since all Live ID's and the Default(no Live ID signon) use
> the same name and each have their own contact.edb file, if
> backing-up more than one contact.edb up, its best to rename the
> backup so one has half a chance to recall later which Live ID or
> Default the file originated.
>
> Since your answer was
> No - Not in a Live ID (fyi the first question had two
> parts...should I assume that duplicates exist ?)
> Yes - I am using more fields than WLM can export.
>
> I don't know if this will work or not...but more thoughts..
> - V12 individual contact files are XML files. It might be possible
> to:
> a. parse the XML files into Excel to create a csv file,
> b. import the csv into a Live ID in a temporary Hotmail account in
> the web interface(do not use WLM import)
> c. Signon with that Live ID in WLM v14 to create a contact.edb
> file, then close WLM
> d. Use regedit to find the Live ID's folder/path/filename
> e. Copy that contact.edb file from the temp Live ID to the Default
> Contact DBStore folder
> f. Open WLM v14 without signing on, the contacts should be
> present.
> g. Wipe out the contacts in the Live ID in the web interface and
> delete the registry entries for that temp Live ID and its DBstore
> root folder(primary and shadow).
>
> Come to think of it there may be other ways to skin the cat if
> available in Windows Mail as non encrypted contact files(attached)
>
> --
> ...winston
> ms-mvp mail
>
>
> "Ildhund" <jn...@removemsn.com> wrote in message
> news:#RHrnc9d...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
oppiTronic
enable compression on the Windows Live Contacts folder. Most of these
database files contain only hot air and will use about 70% less space then.
"Ildhund" <jn...@removemsn.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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