Importing contacts
We take a look at how contact importing to Skype works. This is especially useful if you are just starting on Skype and don’t yet have many friends on Skype, but have built up contact lists in your e-mail programs and Instant Messenger clients. The Skype Import Contacts feature lets you see if any of them can already be found on Skype — maybe they started using it and just forgot to tell you? 
— and if not, you can easily send an e-mail to let them know you’ve moved on to Skype.
]]>This discussion is based on the contact import functionality as seen in Skype for Windows 1.3. Earlier and later versions, as well as other platforms, may somewhat differ.
When registering a new Skype Name, you may start contact import automatically by checking the relevant checkbox. In this case, you are not asked for further confirmation to import contacts – it starts right away after you click Next.
If you have already signed in to Skype with your existing Skype Name, you may start the contact import by choosing *Import Contacts…* from the *Tools* menu.
If you manually started contact importing, you are asked to click *Next*. If you started contact importing when creating a new Skype Name, this step is skipped and import starts immediately.
The first step that Skype does is that it goes through your computer, looking for contacts in MSN Messenger, Opera, Outlook and Outlook Express. (If you don’t have some of these programs, they are of course just skipped. And we’re working on more importers.) When doing that, Skype informs you of the programs that it’s currently working on.
After this step, Skype merges the contacts found from your computer into one big list and starts searching for them in the Skype global user directory, to see if any of them already have Skype Names. It uses a number of parameters to perform the search mainly name and e-mail addresses. (Worth noting here that while you can’t see the e-mail addresses of other users in Skype global directory for various reasons, including privacy protection, you can search by e-mail address.) If you have many contacts, the search may take quite a while, so you may go on and do other things while it’s going on.
After the search is done, you are presented with the results. This is an interesting dialog because it comes to focus automatically even if the wizard was minimized or behind other windows previously. This is because you now need to actually do something about the results. However, feedback has shown this is not that great for everyone because remember above, when creating a Skype Name, you could select the option to start search automatically? Many novice users do that without going into too much detail reading the text. And then when the results dialog pops up a while later, they’re confused about what should they do now. So we’ve got some improvements to do here.
Anyway, you now have the list of search results found on the Skype network.
The search is inevitably somewhat error-prone, so you manually have to select if you want to add any of the found contacts to your contact list right away. You can click on the blue profile button to review full profiles. After you select some of them and click Next, they are added to your contacts and you request authorization from them as usual.
After clicking Next, you see the list of people who you didn’t add to your contact list. You can now send them an invitation by e-mail to use Skype. Again, to protect the innocent and not to spam unknown strangers, you should manually check the contacts that you are really sure you want to send the mail to.
You are presented with the default text for the e-mail and can modify it in any way you want — such as write in your own language, or write something completely different from the default. After done editing, click Send. The e-mail is then sent and you are taken to a page that confirms all ended well.
And just to prove that we’re not spamming your contacts to death, here’s an example e-mail they will receive.
Have you used the Import Contacts feature? Would it need changes to be more useful to you? Have you heard from someone who likes it a lot, or doesn’t like at all? Let us know.
When will this feature be available for OSX (Tiger) and be compatible with its built-in Address Book?
Many thanks!
Jörg
I’m currently testing the function.
-70 contacts in Microsoft Office Outlook.
-135 on MSN.
it’ll take dinner time but it’s seems to be a cool function
See ya
This feature seems nice in Windows, however, it appears nonexistant in Linux. I would love a feature like this in Linux, although that probably means you’d have to connect to the web interfaces of my e-mail providers (e.g. Hotmail, and/or GMail) and search through the contact lists, similar to the way e.g. hi5 (web service) does it. [My OS doesn't have a generic standard for address books and MSN api hooks like Windows does, unfortunately.] If this is not possible, however, (and even if it is,) I would love the ability to e.g. put my contacts’ details in a CVS file and then import them into Skype. Of course, then you’d probably need certain information (e.g. Name, E-mail, Location) for this to be useful.
I like the idea of tools to import contacts into skype: it always good to lower the barrier for large-scale adoption. However, once we have adding a fairly large number of contacts, and most of us have probably already done so, I at least find myself in desperate need of another important tool. Functionality to manage 200 contacts… especially mi SkypeOut contacts. They are a complete mess! Such functionality would be really helpful.
Nice feature, but I was unable to make it work with Thunderbird on Windows.
Hope it’ll be supported soon.
How about Yahoo! and LDAP address books?
Hi,
It would be nice to have an csv file import also.
Ie. I have exported all my contacts from my mobile phone to a text file and I would like to import them to Skype (for SkypeOut)
i think that an integration with Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail would be interesting, as thenewme91 said.
i don’t use outlook, and i was unable to find my friends.
> When will this feature be available for OSX (Tiger) and be compatible with its built-in Address Book?
I’m also interested in seeing this feature for Mac OS!
i think that an integration with everything shall be in the benefit for all skype users.
i don’t use IE , outlook or msn.
best regards
danjoeofsinaia
Hi,
I would also like an import feature for Linux and/or OS X. Neither Windows nor Linux nor OSX have a
Hi,
I would also like an import feature for Linux and/or OS X. Neither Windows nor Linux nor OSX have a
Hi,
seems like your comment feature strips everything after a double quotation mark (Shift-2 on the German keyboard) …
I would also like an import feature for Linux and/or OS X. Neither Windows nor Linux nor OSX have a *generic* addressbook API (like thenewme91 said), it’s just that all OS have *default* mail, groupware and/or addressbook software installed.
For Windows, this is Outlook, unfortunately.
For OS X, this would be Apple Mail and the OS X Addressbook.
For Linux, this would be Kontact/KMail or Evolution, depending on who you ask.
There will be just as many people bitching about missing Eudora / Netscape / TheRat / whatever support in Windows, than there will be people bitching about missing Thunderbird / Sylpheed / Balsa / mutt support under Linux, and missing their favorite *alternative* mail client under OS X.
So: don’t just support Outlook under Windows (not everybody uses it, although Microsoft keeps trying to force feed it to you on every occasion), but please do support this feature under other OS as well.
Thanks!
i am very happy to creat an account in skype. and after this i can talk with my friend in all over the world.
My vote for incorporation of YAHOO address book.
a vote for incorporation of yahoo! messenger contact lists
i´m testing this…
I would like to have a way to write in a nickname and a comment for each of my contacts, because:
1. people use weird names that I don’t know, and I currently have no way whatsoever of knowing who is who.
2. I would like to be able to put in the comment field the time difference between me and the contact so that I do not wake them up!
Otherwise, it’s great… except that Moneybookers will not accept credit card payments made from in Morocco — even if it’s a European or a US credit card. Also, their system of validation is archaic … how bizarre to need to pass through such an archaic system of controls in order to use such a futuristic service !!!
But thank you anyway for all of your good efforts!
Skype name: phonehil
email: 123hilary@gmail.com
(Macintosh OSX + Eudora fan)
of course this is a great little feature. i know this is not a trouble shooter page, but skype only searches my outlook address book, which i don’t use, and i don’t see it search on MSN or anything, where all my contacts are.
and yes, i’m eager to know when it can search for yahoo! address book contacts.
salut cher amitie
thanks Q so much and I share among with all my friends and customer…Lately we invest too much of money on web cam softeare.Its pretty convenient and saving time.
does not seem to work with Outlook 2003
Neither does it find any contacts of over 450 in my outlook adsress book trough the interface or when i lauch the importer for outlook separately … any ideas on how to fix it? perhaps redefine which folders contain contacts?
thx
How about allowing us to restrict the search to particular categories in Outlook? i.e. I only want to search for the 200 in my personal category, not the 1,000 in my business category…
A.
i can caal to somebodey and i have headphones but nobodey hear me!!!! why?
i wante to think skype
I also would appreciate, if other adressbook formats could be imported. Most email-clients have exporting functions, which could help to bridge the gap. But to do this it is required that the now accepted input-formats
for adressbooks are well-described.
To provide as many people as possible direct import facility (and also across platforms!) it probably would be of greatest benefit, if you add support for the popular mozilla/firefox or Netscape-email-clients.
we want it for mac and +!
Exelente!!!!!!!
Skype me ayuda a cominicarme a un bajo precio y con una exelente CALIDAD!!!!
Gracias Skype!!!!
is it possible to import all my contacts who do not have skype but do have regular phones. I would like to import my address book from outlook into SkypeOut.
thanks for your great efforts
porfavor liga o skype
great,but would like to know how skypeme works and how i can see other users other than my list..???
je suis cool,j’aime faire des vrais rencontres avec des nanas de mon age ,moins ou plus,j’aime le sport le voyage,ciné…
je suis cool,j’aime faire des vrais rencontres avec des nanas de mon age ,moins ou plus,j’aime le sport le voyage,ciné
im really enjoy in skype talking with my friends. especially my darling to far for me….
How can I select where to look in Outlook? In my standard contact folder there are a lot more contacts than Skype-import seems to find. Besides the standard contact folder, I have separate contact folders in PST-files I would like to select.
Please let me know. Thanks.
Importing contacts did not work for me. It starts with looking for Outlook contacts. Since I don’t have Outlook installed it then freezes without ever going to Yahoo! Mail and importing my contacts.
This is a big frustrating. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
Mike
بعد حصولى على 0.20 يورو هدية من skype تعذر عليا القيام بأى اتصالات حتى الان ، ماذا أفعل؟
I support the import of contacts from Mozilla/Firefox either
sveiki kas supranta lietuviškai
It does not import MSN contacts for me
je veudrai de connecter des amie sur le skype
pour moi l’essentiel est de comuniquer avec mes proches sans derrangement c’est pourquoi je choisi skype j’en ai trop entendu parlée alors c’est mon jours de le decouvrir.
je suis trop loin de mon coeur et je me suis dis qu’avec skype plus de distance et c’est vrai j’ai vraiment vu la difference.je t’aime mon coeur Prince alors le mieux est skype pour nous.
just fine but i need some support to configure my headphone to talk with my buddies thro skype
i’ve never a good frind here or in msn and yahoo.what’s this???????????????
very ok
il est naz le skipe
Where do I go to actually make a call?
I have introduce 15 of my friend to skype and it is okay by them.
Thanks to skype