Sunday, March 18, 2018

Moving Contacts from Xfinity to People app

I just spent a half day trying to figure out how to move contacts from Xfinity webmail to the Mail and People apps on Windows 10. You would think it should be straightforward, but:

  • Xfinity webmail has no export function
  • Windows 10 Mail app has no import function
So, after spending a lot of time googling and trying things, here are the steps I recommend:
  1. The Windows People app doesn't seem to be able to manage contacts without linking to some sort of account. When you link your Xfinity account to Mail, it does not automatically setup a contacts link, so you need to select another account. I selected my free Outlook.com account and linked it to the People app. 
  2. The only way to export contacts from Xfinity webmail is to email yourself the contact cards (VCF format). You can only mail up to 20 attachments at a time, so you will have to do this in batches.
    1. In webmail, under Address Book, select up to 20 contacts with the checkbox.
    2. Using the extended menu (three horizontal lines), select "Send as vCard"
    3. Send to your own email.
  3. Open the received email and save all of the VCF files (multiple emails) to a folder on your computer.
  4. Save the VCF files to a combined CSV file:
    1. Windows has a "special" folder called Contacts that was used by older Windows applications. This folder has special Import and Export functions that can be used to convert the VCF files into a CSV file needed to import contacts to Mail.
    2. Go to the Windows Contact folder (c:\users\yourname\Contacts) and use the Import function on the action bar.
    3. Select VCF file import.
    4. Use multi-select to select all files in the folder where you saved the VCF files.
    5. After the import finishes, select the Export function.
    6. Select CSV style export.
  5. Go to Outlook.com, and under People, go to Manage - Import contacts.
  6. Select the CSV file that you created. 
  7. Open the People app and you will begin to see the contacts appear as they are sync'd with Outlook.com.
Please comment if you found improvements to these steps.

Good luck!

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