Best way to migrate/merge/update contacts and import for Windows Phone 8?

[spiffus]

Okay, I've been Binging and Googling the interwebs for an ideal solution, but haven't found one yet, so I decided to post here for some advice.

I just got my Lumia 920 a few weeks ago (yay!), and I'm trying to find the best way to consolidate/merge and update my contacts from various sources. I may just have to export all my sources to .csv files and manually consolidate them, but I wanted to see if there was a better way to do this first.

At work, we use Outlook 2010 with Exchange. For the past 7.5 years, I've used Gmail as my primary personal email. I've had a Hotmail address since the Clinton administration, but rarely used it. I probably have 15 contacts there, max. When the Outlook.com beta rolled out, I upgraded to it, and added some alias email addresses, keeping my Hotmail address as my "primary" Microsoft Live account address.

I've decided to keep my Gmail address for things like subscriptions, email digests, store loyalty card info, and so on. My final goal is to migrate all of my personal contacts to Hotmail, and for friends and family to use my Hotmail address. I"m not discontinuing my Gmail address, and will keep it connected to my work BlackBerry (which is connected to our BESX).

The primary challenge I have is that over the past several years, I have contacts in various places, with varying degrees of accuracy. A majority of the current info is in my Gmail account, but some is in my work Exchange address book. I don't want to import all of my Exchange contacts to Hotmail, nor do I want to import all of my Gmail contacts. I've set up my Hotmail to connect with Gmail, LinkedIn, and Facebook using Outlook.com's tools, but those linked contacts don't sync to my Lumia. The only contacts in my Lumia (I set it up with my Microsoft Live account's Hotmail address) are the ones originally created in Hotmail.

I think what I'm essentially looking for is something like the BlackBerry Desktop software - one which would cull through my contacts, and ask me which info from which source is correct, and allow me to manually choose the right ones. For example, BlackBerry Desktop software can compare the contact for John Doe in my Berry to John Doe in Exchange, and I can create a merged contact which takes the email address from the Exchange contact, the phone number from the Berry contact, and the address from either, and consolidate to one contact on the Berry.

Is there any app or wizard or desktop program to do this? Ideally, after creating a new, clean master list, I would import it into Hotmail, and it would be my golden copy (so to speak). As I mentioned earlier, if there isn't such a beast, and I have to export from Outlook and from Gmail to .csvs, and just manually merge them myself, I'll certainly do so. I'm just hoping some enterprising app developer has already made and app for this that I can buy. =)

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for your help!

 

[spiffus]

So does anyone have any suggestions, or should I interpret the dearth or replies to mean that I'm going to have to do it the long way? =)

 

[TaichiSurface]

import everything using Outlook.com it's the best way

 

[gapost]

I am pretty familiar with this and just spent a couple hours fixing up my wife's contacts last night, lol. Both Gmail and Outlook.com have an option to clean up contacts, but I think the gmail one is more accurate and does a better job. So, you could dump all your contacts into Gmail, run the merge option, then import them into outlook.com. There should be an option on the Outlook.com People page to import from google. There are some limitations to outlook.com people and it is definitely not as mature as google. For example, cannot put pictures in our outlook.com contacts. And there aren't customizable labels and no categories, etc. There may be a program that will clean up your contacts, but it probably will cost a bit.

 

[spiffus]

Thanks, all! I just imported all of my contacts into a "clean" Gmail account with no contacts, and will try my cleanups there. I appreciate all of your help!

 

[Sina Owolabi]

Huh. So there's no way of merging WP contacts without using a third party tool. And the other platforms are awash with apps that do this out-of-the-box... Hohum...