Windows Contacts
| A component of Microsoft Windows | |
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| Included with | Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 |
| Replaces | Windows Address Book |
| Replaced by | People |
| Filename extension | .contact |
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| Internet media type | text/x-ms-contact |
| Developed by | Microsoft |
| Type of format | electronic business card |
| Container for | contact information |
| Extended from | XML |
| Website | Windows Contacts |
Windows Contacts is a contact manager that is included in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. It replaced but retains most of the functionality of Windows Address Book and worked with Windows Live Mail and the Vista version of Windows Mail.
Windows Contacts uses an XML-based schema format. Each contact appears as an individual .contact file, in which custom information including pictures can be stored. Window Contacts features extensibility APIs for integration with other applications and for storing custom information. The legacy *.wab format and the open standards *.vcf (vCard) and *.csv (CSV) are also supported.
There is a known problem when exporting the Windows Address Book (*.wab) files to another PC. If the user has contacts organized into folders, this folder structure will not be preserved when the WAB file is imported. All contacts will be preserved, however, leaving some with a considerable task of manually reconstructing the folders and moving addresses back into their rightful places. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249670
A solution for Windows versions still using WAB files as their address book is to copy, not export/import, the WAB files to their correct location. This often preserves the folder structure. Unfortunately, in Windows Live Mail this does not work as WLM doesn't use WAB.
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