Importing Contact Details from Excel Sheet to OutLook

This post is dedicated to Jenny & Sarah who posed this problem to me. This originally arose from another problem. We recently migrated to Office365 . There are limits on the number of emails you can send using Office365 services. We found out that sending emails to group is counted as sending email to single recipient. Now, our next problem was to create the email group from contacts in Excel sheet.
The Steps to import Excel sheet is as follows
1) The Excel sheet needs to be Excel 97-2003 workbook.
2) Our Excel Sheet looks like this It’s always preferred that we don’t have the header. It will be easy for us in the next step.

3) We start with selecting all the cells which contain data. Now we have headers what I will be doing is removing it from the excel sheet. Go to first cell. Press Ctrl+ A this will automatically select all the cells which contain data. If we do not mark the cells we get error like The Microsoft Excel 97-2003 file “C:folder1folder2abc.xls” has no named ranges. Use Microsoft Excel 97-2003 to name the range of data you want to import.
4) After selecting the data cells, we go to Formulas , then go to Define name as shown below

5) When you click Define it comes up with Dialog box; Enter name as Contacts

6) Close the Excel file after saving it. Usually you if you don’t close it you will get error like Outlook was unable to retrieve the data from the file “C:folder1folder2abc.xls”. Verify that you have the correct file, that you have permission to open it, and that is not open in another program.
7) Open Out look, go to file then Import Select the Import from another program or file. Click Next Select Microsoft Excel 97-2003. Click Next

8) Click Next Select Contacts , then click Next

9) Tick Import , when you tick import we get the mapping box.

Now what we do is pick up the Elements and Drop them on to the elements on the Right hand side which results in the box below. We can populate up to 3 email addresses. The email addresses are at the bottom side of the box. Verify if the data is populated correctly by clicking Next button.

After you are happy with the mapping, click on OK and wallah all the contacts from Excel Sheet will be in Contacts in OutLook