Synchronize Outlook.com Contacts among 3 Email Accounts

[PHWhite]

My wife and I have 3 separate Hotmail/outlook.com accounts: hers + mine + ours. We would like the same set of contacts available on all three accounts. For email access and Contacts management we primarily use the outlook.com website on Windows 8 PCs and the outlook.com Android app. We also have Office 2013 with Outlook 2013 so we could use that for Contacts synchronization. At present we keep our Contacts synchronized on the 3 accounts by exporting them to Excel so that we can compare and manually synchronize them by updating them on each email account so everything matches. We would like an easier process for doing this, though it does not need to be automatic. We are willing to pay for a product that meets our needs, and we are also prepared to use and maintain macros or some VBA code if that would get the job done. Thanks for any advice on how to do this.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

CodeTwo has a folder sync product and there is Sync2 from 4Team.
http://www.codetwo.com/outlook-sync/
http://www.sync2.com/

Macros can do it too, but i'd try those products first.

 

[PHWhite]

It appears that the CodeTwo and Sync2 products require PST files for synchronization. Because I am using Outlook.com I don't actually have Contacts stored in PST files. Therefore the only way I can figure out how to use these products to synchronize contacts would be to start Outlook 2013, copy the contacts from each email account into PST files, synchronize the Contacts in the PST files, and then copy them back to Outlook.com contacts. However, I could also open both email accounts with Outlook 2013 and copy the contacts directly without using the CodeTwo or Sync2 products. When I have done this I get problems with changes to some fields such as Notes fields.

Perhaps I ought to explore ways to use Macros to clean up the problems that happen when I use Outlook 2013 to copy Outlook.com Contacts from one account to another. Is there any reason it would not work to use macros to update Contacts in an OST instead of a PST? I would want to backup my contacts to a PST before running the synchronization process.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Macros will work fine. I have a few samples such as this one: http://www.slipstick.com/developer/copy-new-appointments-to-another-calendar-using-vba