Importing & syncing contacts including Outlook

Hi everyone!

Executive Summary:
This describes an efficient and effective means of importing contacts from Outlook and other email programs after the initial installation.

Description:
During a first time setup of TB, the auto import feature is quite intuitive. It should allow you to import mail, address book and settings. It may not import all contact data as some programs, such as Outlook, have more than the 35 data fields that TB is limited to.

The challenge becomes to try to import data after the first time setup. An effective solution is Plaxo - www.plaxo.com

Process:
1. Register a new account and follow the automated setup that includes importing address book data. The process will ask for the email program or web service to export from.

2. Click on "Help" from the top right of your profile and look down on the left side to find the link to the TB tool bar download. Follow the instructions to install and when TB is restarted it will ask you for your Plaxo login and password. Once verified, it will automatically sync all of the contacts to TB.

**Note: Reminder, if more than the 35 fields included in TB exist in the originating email client, they will be ignored. If this data is required, manually enter into each record's available fields on the "Other" tab.

Plus:
- easily imports ALL available Outlook data that TB recognizes.
- when syncing from the originating address book to Plaxo, the system will try to locate these existing contacts as active Plaxo users. IF any are found, you can send these contacts an invitation to link to your Plaxo contact list and from there on, anytime they change their profile, it will be reflected in your profile and subsequently synced to the TB address book. In addition, anytime you change your personal contact data, the new information will be updated in your contacts' Plaxo profiles and any of your own social networking profiles. (See note below)

Minus:
- Must sign up to a Plaxo account
- Subscriber must do risk analysis of how well Plaxo can be trusted not to misuse contacts data.
- At this time, Plaxo will only sync contacts and not settings, mail, calendar or other data
- At this time, Plaxo does not support multiple identities or address books. If you have more than one in TB, all synced contacts will go to the Personal Address Book.

Conclusion:
The manual import feature in TB is cumbersome as confirmed from the Mozilla website. Most add-ons are either costly, non-existent (a few dead links at Mozilla) or not any more effective or easy to use than the TB import function. Plaxo's *Thunderbird syncing is a two-step process that is efficient, effective and accurate.

* TESTED with Portable Thunderbird v2.0.0.19 executing from Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4G USB key as part of the PortableApps platform.

**And, no, I don't work for or own Plaxo shares, but I'm thinking about it