I am having problems copying an excel worksheet of contacts into the Outlook Contacts. I have defined all the columns in the worksheet to correspond to Outlook fields and used the import option in outlook. All I get is a corrupted contact database full of blank records which I can't delete and the program terminates with the "sorry for the inconvenience" message and option to send the error report to microsoft. I'm using XP home and Office 2000.

Does anyone have any ideas, please?

You could try an intermediate format. Save your excel spreadsheet as a CSV file and then use the CSV option instead of the Excel import option. After you've saved the CSV chekc it opens OK in notepad and is not garbled. If that fails I would suggest a problem with your Outlook installation and a re-install of that (after backing up your files) may be in order.

Thanks,
I have tried all that. That makes me think I am not doing it right.

If you can definitely read the CSV file in notepad or similar, prior to importing and it still goes garbled in Outlook then there is definitely a problem with your Outlook installation.

It may be because Outlook was installed with ActiveSync when I got my pda, which was before I got the Office 2000 upgrade.

If I remove Outlook and reinstall it from the Office 2000 CD will I lose my existing contacts and e-mails?

You will lose your contacts and emails unless you back them up. Depending on how it is set up on your machine it could be as simple as copying the .pst file somewhere safe, re-installing and then moving it back. I can't say for certain though. In Outlook if everything is listed under "Personal Folders" then you can right click on it in the tree and look at the properties. Here you can find the location of the .pst file. If you have another machine with Outlook you have access to you can try copying the file and re-attaching it to another machine to make sure you won't lose it before you do something drastic like a re-install.

Another option I am not sure of is that you could try installing Outlook from your CD over the top and you may get a repair option.

Another thought I had is that you may like to see if you can import them into Outlook Express and then from Outlook Express to full blown Outlook but haven't done it myself so won't know if it works properly.

Thanks. I have tried installing Outlook from the Ofiice CD over the top of the existing one, but it doesn't change anything. I'll back everything up and reinstall Office, including Outlook.

Thanks for your help.

I have tried Excel to Outlook software. I will suggest you to give it a try.
This tool helped me in copying contact information from Excel file to Outlook contacts.

You can download the software from here: Excel to Outlook Convert Excel to Outlook Contacts | Export Excel File to Outlook Contacts

Thanks

Evan