MailWhen

Documentation

Adding the addresses to Outlook

Six steps, once. Two of them are the reason an Outlook import fails silently, so they are worth not skipping.

Download the Outlook CSV

Before you start: unblock the file

Windows marks anything that arrived from a browser or an email attachment, and Outlook's importer refuses a marked file. It reports “a file error has occurred in the Comma Separated Values translator” and mentions permissions, which sends you looking in entirely the wrong place.

  1. Right-click mailwhen-outlook.csv in your Downloads folder.
  2. Choose Properties.
  3. At the bottom of the General tab, tick Unblock.
  4. Choose Apply, then OK.

If there is no Unblock checkbox, the file was never marked and there is nothing to do.

The import

  1. In Outlook, choose File, then Open & Export, then Import/Export.
  2. Select Import from another program or file, then Next.
  3. Select Comma Separated Values, then Next.
  4. Browse to the file you unblocked. Under Options, choose Do not import duplicate items — that makes the import safe to repeat. Then Next.
  5. Choose Contacts as the destination folder, then Next.
  6. Choose Finish. It takes a minute or so and cannot be cancelled.

There is no need to touch Map Custom Fields. The file uses Outlook's own column layout, so every field maps on its own.

Do not use the vCard

Outlook reads one contact out of a vCard and silently drops the rest. Given mailwhen.vcf it imports MailWhen Cancel and stops — no error, no warning, every other address missing. This is a long-standing Outlook limitation rather than a problem with the file, and it is the reason a separate CSV exists at all.

Dragging the individual cards in does not help either: Outlook opens a window per contact that has to be saved and closed one at a time.

Afterwards

Every contact is filed under the MailWhen category, so the whole set can be found together — and removed in one action if it turns out not to suit you. Deleting them changes nothing about your reminders; anything already scheduled still arrives.

Most of the entries have no name, only an address. That is deliberate: a nameless contact is only ever matched on its own address, so typing 3d finds 3d@ and none of them crowds the people already in your address book. See Contacts for what the full set contains.