Transferring contacts to a Windows Phone

[WPCentral Question]

Just bought a Lumia 630 (very impressed with it for the price) for my mother-in-law as a gift and wanted to copy some of the contacts from my People list onto that phone, but I'm drawing a blank, even though I am actually creating an account for my mil so I have access to her Outlook.com, etc.

I started by trying Bluetooth transfer from my L920 but despite having no problem connecting, I can't find an option to send a contact.

I tried emailing a vCard from my Outlook (desktop) but the L630 mail apps doesn't recognise the file.

If I log into mil Outlook.com account, there is only the option to download the vCard, not to process it (i.e. add it).

In People web site I see an option under Manage to 'Export to Outlook.com and other services' but clicking that comes up with an error page saying there are technical difficulties.

Am I missing something obvious? Is there an easy way to send a contact from my Windows Phone (or Microsoft account) to somebody else's Windows Phone (Microsoft account) without having to configure desktop Outlook for both accounts? I REALLY like WP but this does seem like a pretty basic feature that is missing. Have never tried to do the same on iOS or Android so no idea how they handle this...

 

[anon(7900571)]

Since you have a lumia device try this app to transfer contacts Transfer my Data | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

 

[T Moore]

Go to your outlook.com account on a PC and export your contact list to your PC, it is a csv file.
Log into your moms account and import the csv file to her People.

Don't know what is up with the 'technical difficulties' , I've never had a problem with it.

 

[Paul David O]

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately both suggestion appear to copy all contacts (looks like they are intended to be used if you have to change accounts for some reason) and I only want to copy a select few. As such it is probably less work to just re-enter the contact details by hand rather than use these account transfer methods and then delete everyone I don't want to add to my mother's phone.

I'm surprised the feature isn't there - even my first mobile could 'beam' contacts to another phone via Infa-red (oh, the old days :smile. To be fair, I guess this is the first time in a decade I've wanted to send a contact to someone else's phone, so maybe its something people just don't do any more...