OL 2010 ANSI Or Unicode?

[Bigaldoc]

In my newly created OL 2010 files I have a number of contacts with an ampersand in the name, such as "Andrews & Associates." In the contacts listing, the ampersand shows up as & and I suppose it had to do with the transport of that contact list from my Yahoo web data because an ampersand shows up OK on many calendar entries where I have used it.

I'm stymied trying to find a "search and replace" applicable to the contacts list. In this case, I can't find a solution in Help or via Google.

Can it be done en masse? I've poked a couple manually and all I have to do is delete the " amp; " and the remaining ampersand stays as a lone character. That's what makes me think it happened in the transport.

[HansV]

You can search for contacts with & in the name, but Outlook does not provide a search and replace feature. Do you have any idea how many contacts with & you have?

[Bigaldoc]

Thanks Hans! After writing, I continued to Google it and, like you say, found several hits saying there is no search and replace in OL 2010. I also found a training video that in some convoluted way was doing find and replace in email. I watched the whole video to see if there might be a workaround for contacts but there was none.

I suspect I have 30-40 but haven't counted them. As I write, I have pulled up a search on all of them and will proceed to do it manually. It doesn't take that long. All I have to do is double-click, delete the "amp;" and tab so any other fields in that contact are also changed. When I close, within a few seconds the contact leaves the search screen.

It won't kill me - I'll just do it manually. It would be terrible if I had hundreds. Thanks for responding!

[HansV]

OK, with that number it's not too bad. There are add-ins that provide find-and-replace for contacts, but that's probably overkill.

[Don Wells]

Hi Al
    Here's how I was able to do it in 2003.

• Export the Contact file to an Excel file;
• Do a 'Search and Replace' in Excel;
• Save the Excel file;
• Delete all contacts from Outlook; then
• Import the Contact list into Outlook from your Excel file.

H.T.H.

[Bigaldoc]

Thanks, Don. Never thought of that. But I'm already well on the way, doin' 'em one at a time. Good info for the future if it comes up again.

[Bigaldoc]

Don, as usual hindsight is always 20-20 !!!

I looked at the .CSV file that Yahoo exported for Contacts, using Open Office's spreadsheet. Sure enough, the "fault" was the Yahoo output file. It contained not only the ampersand problem, but another that I hadn't noticed yet in OL 2010. The apostrophe was output as ' rather than the apostrophe.

I could've avoided the manual edits if I had thought to open the .CSV file with a spreadsheet and edit en masse at that level.

Well, we live and learn and as I said to Hans at least in my case it wasn't too many to do manually and I'm already in business. Maybe this thread will help someone else in the future!

[Don Wells]

Maybe this thread will help someone else in the future!

That's why rhis lounge exists.

[Bigaldoc]

Maybe this thread will help someone else in the future!

That's why rhis lounge exists.

Amen my friend!