Microsoft Office Live Small Business Community

 The Contact Manager has very clear directions about how to import Contacts from an Excel spreedsheet into Office Live.

 Only problem is, when I get all the way to the end, the instruction say: "On the Contacts tab in Contact Manager, click Actions , and then click Edit in Datasheet. Your contact list in the datasheet view appears."

 I go to the Contacts tab, I click Actions, and there is NO Edit in Datasheet link shown!!!

 Anyone else encountering this problem? What do I do?? It should be simple.

 I hope to transition from salesforce.com to Office Live, but I can't do it without the 2000+ contact history.

 Thank you

I have read the directions for importing contacts to contact manager and the way I understand it you basically have to add the contacts manually (copy and paste from the excel spread sheet) this might seem like a pain to do it this way but the fastest way I found to add contacts to “contact manager” in Business applications is first go to the contact us module on your contact us webpage and in properties select “add to contact list” then I send a e-mail to all my contacts asking them politely to go to the website on the contact us page and send a e-mail with their contact information in the body of the message this will automatically add their e-mail address to “contact Manager” in Business applications and you can use the extra information in the body of the message to fill in the rest of the information. I have found since the last upgrade that I can not even import my contact list to the basic office live e-mail, the way I do this is have a mailto: html code on website where they send me a e-mail and then I get option to “add to contact list” where it will extract all the information from their e-mail

Wow. Is that complex and time consuming to do one at a time, especiallty when the instructions indicate one should be able to copy a field from one spreadsheet and past the whole thing into the Contact Manager database.

 It is not practical for me to e-mail all contacts 1000+ contacts and have them e-mail back in the website. I need to capture all the info that has been accumulated in salesforce.com

 I wonder of Office Live Small Business will repair this problem. Is there a way to get it on their agenda?

 Thanks again.

Hello vermontcreek:

I look for that to be on the list, I was working with that problem yesterday and another temp solution I uploaded the windows address book .wab file to documents in team area of business applications and was able to use that. I am lucky, clients that I do the webpages for are the only ones that use the office live e-mail accounts, me I use gmail but still look for ways to get contact added to contact manager.

Try to copy the fields from the excel spread sheet to contact manager maybe you will have better luck that me. I seen where I just could not just import the contact list and did not bother wasteing any more time messing with it. Main program is Quickbooks Point of Sale

Select all rows in Excel, copy, then select A1 cell in OLSB datagrid edit mode and paste. All record are pasted in. Just make sure that you have lined up your column to match.

Is there a problem with copy and paste into Office Live BCM in the edit datasheet mode?  I know I have done this in the past and now I can't copy and paste anything into the BCM.  Yesterday I spent about 4 hours trying to do this, somebody please help!

Your above instructions should work, simple go to Contact Manager, click Actions, then Edit in data sheet, and from there, you can copy/paste.  If edit data sheet isn't there try contacting support.

I found that database view was NOT available using Mozilla Firefox, but IS available using IE. Margi in Maine

I have a question for you. i have set my excel up to match the datasheet online that looks like access.  I work at home and at the office trying to get our business contacts imported.  I have tried highlighing the enitre row in excel to just highlighting the columns need to be added. I click onto the datasheet online that highkights the whole row and i get a error about cut and paste size.  so i adjust and now it won't paste.  I finally decided to only try highlighting 2 contacts.  and using the same process it added them.  So I'm all excited that i finally have it working to i try the next 2.  I get the error again.  I only way i have be able to set up contacts into officelive is to go to each and every column in the datasheet and paste what one colum.  well after 10 to 20 colums I need a easier way around it. 

At work i use XP which is fully updated and has all the right software.  At home my laptop is Vista but I only use the information from online.  So i know that thats not the issue

so i either say the cut or paste cell does match select a column.  if i do that then the all the excel file is clumped together in the colum.

here is the new error " some data is truncated because the pasted data contained more character the destinaction column allows" that what i get when i select a colum.

 any help is appeiciated thank you

Hi,

The easiest way to make the columns match is to export your contacts to excel (Contact Manager->Actions->Export to Spreadsheet). This will load your contacts and the headers into your Excel spreadsheet. AFter doing that, save the spreadsheet under a new name and add your contacts to the list. Once yo have that, then open up the datasheet view in Office Live's contact manager and copy and paste from the spreadsheet as you did previously.

Try it out and let us know how it went

Royster

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