I’m very pleased to introduce the 2nd guest blogger at Simple Help, Aseem Kishore. Aseem is a technology enthusiast and lead blogger for Online-Tech-Tips, a terrific how-to site I’d strongly suggest you subscribe to.
-Ross
If you’re one of the millions of people using Microsoft Outlook, either at home or at the office, you’ve probably had to move your email from one computer to another at some point in time. Transferring Outlook emails, calendar, contacts and tasks is a fairly simple procedure, but it would also be nice to transfer the autocomplete addresses we’ve come to depend on.
In case you’re not sure what I am talking about, autocomplete is when you open a new email form and begin typing in an address into the To: box:
Notice that I typed the letter c and several Outlook contacts automatically appeared below. These are addresses that I have previously sent emails to and that’s why they show up. This is extremely useful if someones email address is very different from their name because all you have to remember is there name instead of “greek_god109293@supermail.com”!
So here are the steps in order to successfully transfer the auto-complete history to another computer.
- If Outlook is open, go ahead and close it.
- Next you’ll have to turn on viewing of hidden files, so go to My Computer in XP or Computer in Vista, then go to Tools and finally Folder Options. In Vista, you might have to press ALT in order to see the menu.
- Click on the View tab and then select the Show hidden files and folders radio button under the Hidden Files and Folders option. Also make sure the Hide extensions for known file types checkbox directly below hidden files is unchecked.
- Now in My Computer, go to your profile folder under Document and Settings. In Vista, you will find your profile folder in the Users folder.
- Once in your profile folder, go to Application Data directory, then to Microsoft and finally to Outlook. So the final path should be something like:
C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
- In the Outlook folder, look for a file with a .NK2 extension. This is the file that contains all of the autocomplete information. Copy that file and transfer it to the new computer.
Finally, go to the same location on the new computer as described above, namely, Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook and paste the .NK2 file there. Start Outlook and open a new email. When you start typing, all of your previous autocomplete addresses will show up. Enjoy!
thanks man you awsome
Extremely useful and informative guide. This will save me some serious hassle.
Is there a way to remove a single email address from this ‘quick address listing’?
Incredibly helpful. Saved me a lot of hastle too!
Eric, i believe you can remove addresses by simply pressing the down arrow to the address you want to remove and pressing delete.
Just a thought – I wonder why microsoft haven’t designed it so these addresses are stored on the exchange server somewhere to save both users and administrators the hastle of doing this manually when users move pc’s.
No Firefx e no Google Chrome em vez de usar favoritos usam Marcadores.
Eu pergunto nestes dois casos como consigo transferir todos os Marcadores instalados de um computador para outro ou gravá-los num CD ou numa Pen para poder fazer a transferência? Ou até mesmo para ficar com uma cópia subselente ?
Ficaria bastante grato por esta informação.
Antonio Bento Luís
This didn’t work for me. Any suggestions? I’m going from XP to Vista using Office 2003. The ‘03 Outlook seems to work just fine on Vista, but I can’t figure out why the auto recognition isn’t working when I’ve done the steps described above. Best Buy “geeks” told me this can’t be done since it’s a history file and you can’t transfer a history file. I have no idea if that’s correct or not. Help?
Por favor si me puedes ayudar. Yo e buscado el archivo con la extensión .NK2 pero no la encuentro por ningun lado. Tal vez será porque yo uso XP profesional u Office . 2007???? si sabes algo por favor avísame
Stacy,
At which point did this fix not work for you? Can you outline exactly what you were doing when it didn’t work?
This fix should work fine, I have done it many times for users from XP to Vista. It was a relatively simple process.
I am in the same boat as Stacy. I followed the directions to a tee and it went smoothly. When I went back into Outlook auto-complete didn’t work. I too am using Office 03 and moving from XP to Vista.
Bless you my friend. This worked excellently for me. I transfered .NK2 after having to reformat Vista Ultimate (go figure) and found the old .NK2 file in the “windowsOLD” file which Vista creates when you reformat your hard drive.
This is great. Do you know how to do this on Office 2008 on a Mac?
Thanks for the help.
This is where I’m looking for the *.nk2 file: C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
No luck…any suggestions please. Appreciatively, Ken
Ken,
You’ve got the folder path slightly wrong. It should be:
C:\Documents and Settings\”userfolder”\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
You’ll find the nk2 file in there.
This did not work for me, as well. I copied the NK2 file from c://Docs and Settings\myuser\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. The copy and paste process worked fine but nothing changed in Outlook when I opened it and began a new message. The addresses still were not there.
Any thoughts?
This also did not work from me. I went from XP to Vista, Outlook 2007. The auto complete still does not work. Any other suggestions?
The correct path for Vista is myuser\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\. It worked with me but make sure that the file name is Outlook.Nk2. By the way, I’m part of a domain.
Good Luck
Bedankt voor de info!
Ik had nog een vraagje. Is het mogelijk om de gegevens uit het automatisch aanvullen te importeren in je contactpersonen? Of alle unieke email-adressen uit je verzonden items aan de contactpersonen toe te voegen?
Alvast bedankt!
grtz Heisa
Okay,
Forgot that the forum is in English
Thanks for the info!
I have another question. Is it possible to import the addresses the auto-complete file to the Contactpersons? Or is it possible to import all unique addresses from the sent items box to the Contactpersons?
Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Hans
I am actually looking for exact steps to move Outlook 2000 calendar and contacts from an old Windows 98 computer to my new Vista desktop. I’ve tried burning a cd of the .pst file(s), but when i put it in my new computer, it doesn’t allow me to paste it into the Outlook folder there. I’d rather use the new Windows Mail, Address Book and Calendar, but only if i can transfer my old data first. Help!
I have moved the autocomplete over from an old harddrive to new laptop – but it only works if the file name of the old file matches the one in the new location. Its seems not all of them are named outlook.NK2. At first I had two NK2 files: old.NK2 and new.NK2. Deleted old.NK2 and renamed new.NK2 to old.NK2. Hope that makes sense and helps?
I think to get the the NK2 file to work correctly it must match the same profile name on the previous outlook
This did not work for me. I found the old .NK2 file, copied it and pasted it into the outlook folder with pst files on the new computer (in my case new hard drive. Started a new message, but the auto complete did not work. I noticed that the .nk2 file is named Matthew.nk2, not Outlook.nk2 and wonder if that makes any difference.
Na minha opiniao, perfeito. Basta ter o basico em conhecimento de informatica pra realizar esse procedimento.
Tks