There are a number of issues when importing Outlook Contacts into CRM using the Tools | Import wizard.
- The Outlook address is exported as a single field with carriage returns between each line. This needs to be decomposed into separate fields by replacing the CRLF with a characte such as “:” and then using the Text to Columns feature in Excel
- The Outlook description field contains carriage returns. CRM will not import fields with carriage returns. An inelegant solution is to replace the CRLF combination (Char(13)+Char(10)) with a character combination such as ^^ (or anything that is not likely to occur in the text of the description. Then complete the import and then update the description using SQL (use a cursor to step through every row).
- However, it seems that if the import file is saved in Unicode and the description field is enclosed within double quotes it is possible to import CRLF combinations.