How to retrieve Windows Live Mail Contacts

Hi Emory,

Are you signing in with a Windows Live ID?

If you sign in with a Windows Live ID, your contacts will sync automatically. If you don’t sign in with a Windows Live ID, then your contacts must be manually exported and re-imported. Refer to the article for more information:

How do I import and export email, contacts, and calendars with Windows Live Mail?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/mail-import-backup-restore

Hope it helps.

Dear Rohit,

Thank you for your reply. I had not used Windows Live Mail with a Windows Live ID on my old system, so I can only retrieve my contacts from the old hard drive.  The link that you sent me presumes that I can export the contacts from my old working machine, but I only have the hard drives from the old machine

(I can no longer run anything on the old machine) , and I can only run the new version of Windows Live Mail from my new machine which doesn't have the contacts.

Are there  folders other than  \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\contacts that I should copy over to the new drive to retrieve  my contacts from my old drive?  

Hi Emory,

Unfortunately, you will not be able copy the contacts from the folder. The only way to export and import the contacts.

Hi Emory,

Unfortunately, you will not be able copy the contacts from the folder. The only way to export and import the contacts.

Dear Rohit,

Thank you for your reply. I am quite disappointed to learn that I cannot recover my contacts. Why would Microsoft design a software in such a way that recovery of critical personal information after a computer failure is not possible? When I used Outlook Express, I could always recover my address book (a simple wab file), but I couldn't recover my Email messages. Now with Windows Live Mail, I can recover Email messages but not my address book.  My address book is loaded with addresses and phone numbers that I don't have saved anywhere else. I did not want to share all of that personal information with Microsoft online with a Windows Live ID.  That should not be the only option offered for recovering data. I have tried exporting my address book to  CSV files, which will save the data, but re-importing csv files scrambles the data fields,and moreover, I don't have a recent copy.  I don't see any reason for designing software that makes recovery of one's personal data so difficult or impossible. Although I am quite disappointed, I appreciate you looking into the problem. Thank you for your help.

I did not want to share all of that personal information with Microsoft online with a Windows Live ID.

You are not sharing anything with anybody by signing in. You're just making a situation like the one you're in less likely to arise.

My address book is loaded with addresses and phone numbers that I don't have saved anywhere else.

The data in your contacts database can most probably be retrieved with the help of third-party software. I'd be happy to help, but (a) you would have to send me the database, either by email or by uploading it to a file-sharing site like OneDrive, and (b) I would have to return the extracted data to you in a similar way. The alternative is that you have a go yourself; it's quite straightforward once you get the hang of it. The program I use is EseDbViewer.

Dear Firedog,

Thank you very much for your advice and for your kind offer to assist me.

I followed the link that you sent, and despite the notice posted on that page 

This is deprecated, it uses the Windows API’s and so requires a valid database. Use libesedb instead.

I downloaded and installed the program.

(The alternative that was recommended led me to a blank URL).

On my old hard drive I found a number of EDB files, and I wasn't certain which one to try to open.

The most logical choice was be the most recent one.

There are some which I recognize as being from a much earlier installation and I ignored all of the ones that began with with G:\Old C\Users\User

In any case here are the paths to all of the EDB files that I found on the old drive.

G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.5\DBStore\Backup\new\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{22f1af8a-bafd-4e46-9734-6ad1c6d2291c}\DBStore\Backup\new\contacts.edb
G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{22f1af8a-bafd-4e46-9734-6ad1c6d2291c}\DBStore\Backup\new\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{22f1af8a-bafd-4e46-9734-6ad1c6d2291c}\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Contacts\{22f1af8a-bafd-4e46-9734-6ad1c6d2291c}\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\W4CR1\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.4\DBStore\Backup\new\contacts.edb
G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.4\DBStore\Backup\new\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.4\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.5\DBStore\Backup\new\contacts.edb
G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.5\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\W4CR1\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.4\DBStore\contacts.edb
G:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.5\DBStore\contacts.edb

Of the paths that do not begin with G:\Old C\Users\User and which did not include the word Backup,

I tried opening all of them with  EseDbViewer, and with each attempt, I got the following message: 

Cannot access the file the file is locked or in use

The only thing that I can imagine that would be using any of those databases is Windows Live Mail so even though Windows Live Mail is not showing any of my contacts, I closed Windows Live Mail and tried again, but I still got the same message from EseDbViewer, 

Is there something else that I should be doing?

If I were to upload an EDB file for you to try, which one(s) should I send? 

Thank you once again.

The folders named with a {GUID} are leftovers from Windows Live Essentials 2009. 15.5 is the latest, from Windows Essentials 2012.

This should get you going.

1. To start EseDbViewer, find it in the woanware folder in All programs, then right-click on it and select Run as administrator.
2. The file you want is contacts.edb in this folder:
   G:\Old C\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\Default\15.5\DBStore
   It would be better to copy the folder to your Windows drive, e.g. to your documents folder.
3. Having successfully opened the file, the table containing contact data is SimpleContact ..., so select this one and use File > Export > CSV to save all 156 fields for each contact.
4. Import the CSV file into Excel, using the wizard to ignore irrelevant and empty columns. Be sure to import phone number fields as Text, so that Excel doesn't try to evaluate them. You should end up with only a handful of columns, ready to Save as > CSV.
5. I'm not quite sure what to do with all the files and folders you copied into the Windows Live\Contacts folder. My inclination would be:
   1. Rename the folder, e.g. to OldContacts, in the hope that it will be re-created.
   2. Run wlarp.exe to Repair ... Windows Essentials
   3. Reboot the computer, then launch Windows Live Mail
6. If and when the program starts properly, use the Import function in the contacts window to import the CSV you saved at (4).

Dear Firedog,

Thanks again for your advice.

All of the files that you saw listed in my last message are  on another drive (not the drive that is currently running Windows Live Mail).  Windows Live Mail is currently running  my E drive, and I can add new contacts in that new installation (although I have refrained from doing so in the hope that I can still get back my old contacts).

The G:\Old C\Users\User folder is from a much earlier installation (from years ago).

The files that I need to recover are all in the G:\Users\User\ folder. which are the files that  Windows Live Mail was using before the old computer died.

I tried to run the EseDbViewer as administrator on the  same database that you specified (but from the G:\Users\User\ ....) folder. I then got the following message 

Database was not shutdown properly Recovery must first be run to properly complete database operations for the previous shutdown.

I clicked on OK and it seems as though the program just hangs at that point (it has been running for over an hour, and I am using a relatively fast processor). 

Is there something else that I should be doing? 

Thanks once again.

Database was not shutdown properly Recovery must first be run ...

... Is there something else that I should be doing? 

Yes! EseDbViewer can't operate on a dirty database.

1. Press Windows key, type cmd and press Ctrl-Shift Enter (all three keys at once) to open an administrator command window.
   
   
2. Type cd and a space, then
   
   "G:\Users\{user}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\default\15.5\DBStore"
   
   and press Enter.
   
   
3. Type (or copy, then right-click and Paste):
   
   esentutl /r edb /l LogFiles /a
   
   and press Enter.

This recovery ('/r ') should clean up the database (possibly with a minor loss of data, like the very last changes you made before it was forcibly closed) and enable you to run EseDbViewer against it. If it doesn't we might have to repair it, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.