Without a doubt, Facebook is the most important means of communication on the internet today, however, to make official communications and send important messages, email remains the most used and most useful tool. After adding many friends to Facebook, it would also be a good thing to keep a copy of your contacts in your email inbox .
Taking into consideration the three main services, email, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook.com, let's see how to import Facebook contacts and their Email addresses into the online address book . The implication of this import is that Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail contacts can be imported into Microsoft Outlook which offers tools for interacting in Facebook, directly from the mail client.
In addition, from Microsoft Outlook, the contacts in the address book can be imported into other Email boxes such as Libero or Alice and can be transferred to new generation mobile phones and smartphones.
To start importing Facebook contacts you need a Hotmail or Yahoo Mail account .
If you do not use these two services, you must create one that is disposable, easily and for free (see how to sign up for Outlook.com without changing your email address)
Once you have entered the online mailbox of Yahoo or Windows Live Hotmail, you must click on the contact / address book link.
In Yahoo Mail, you have to go to the import page now .
In Outlook.com instead press on Manage -> Import .
On both mail services, you can click on the Facebook button to import your friends into your Yahoo or Windows Live account .
Before importing it is necessary to authorize Facebook and allow time for data retrieval from Facebook, until the download of contacts is completed and the address book populated.
With Yahoo, once the operation is concluded, there is the advantage of being able to eliminate duplicates so as not to have duplicates in the address book.
With Hotmail instead there is the possibility to send an invitation to those who are also recognized on MSN Messenger so as to add them even in the most used chat in the world.
Now that the contacts have been transferred to Yahoo or Hotmail, they can also be imported into Gmail .
From Yahoo, you can press the " Export " button and choose where to save the address book, whether in Microsoft Outlook or in single vCard. On Hotmail, always from the Manage menu in the contacts screen, press "Export" to save the csv file. For Gmail, you can choose to save your contacts to a csv file while for Apple's Address Book, you need to use individual vCards.
To import Facebook contacts into Gmail, simply access Google mail, go to Contacts, go to "Other Actions" and choose "Import" and choose the CSV file created previously. If desired, you can add all the contacts imported into a new group.
To transfer contacts from Hotmail to Microsoft Outlook you do not need to use a csv file, you can instead use the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector plugin which does everything automatically by itself.
After importing the Facebook address book into Microsoft Outlook, you can install the Microsoft Social Connector to view their status updates and to interact on Facebook directly from the email client program, without having to necessarily enter the Facebook.com site.
Finally, I remember the guide to import vCards into Windows Contacts or Microsoft Outlook and that the address book can then be transferred to a smartphone using the relevant synchronization service or via Google Sync .
In another article I wrote how to synchronize the Gmail address book with the Outlook address book.
