Adding Contacts to Outlook From an Email

I just had a client call and ask me if there's a quick way to add a contact to Outlook from an incoming email message . He had been copying and pasting and window-flipping to add contact information from an email he received. I gave him a couple of suggestions.

First Choice: right click directly on the senders name to get a menu of options that includes "Add Contact to Outlook." That will add their name and email only, you still have to fill in the rest. But while there, take a look a the other features you will find in right-clicking a senders (or a CC'd persons') name in an Outlook email message. You have choices like "Look Up Outlook Contact" - which means that if you  already have them as a contact, it will open it for you (quick access to their phone number).  You could send them a fresh new email by selecting  "Send Mail" or you could even  send them a meeting request right then and there. Learn more about The Right Click at one of my back posts.)

Second choice: Get a 3rd party tool that quickly helps you capture contact (and other info). I use AddressGrabber and like it just fine, there's also Anagram.
It seems to me that if you're saying to yourself "there must be a quicker way" - there usually is. You just have to ask the right person.

Comments

[Ben M. Schorr]

Another good way to do it in Outlook is to drag and drop the message to the Contacts folder. That will have a similar effect to right-clicking on the name and adding the contact but will also put the text of the message in the Notes section of the contact.

In some cases that content can be useful for future reference (to remind you of context for that user) and also many people have their addresses/phone numbers in their signature blocks and I can then do a very quick drag/drop to get that information and drag it into the appropriate Contact fields to populate the Contact item.

-B-

[Ernie]

I've used Anagram and it works great. I'm sure AddressGrabber does too. Either one of these tools is indispensible if you plan on capturing contact information from emails, and who wouldn't be doing that?

[Marc Marling]

I can vouch for Anagram. Since I found it a few months ago, it has become an indispensible tool. No longer do I save old emails I don't need just for the address because I was too lazy or busy to create a contact in Outlook. Now I just highlight, hit cntl and c twice and it creates the contact for me - and 9 out of 10 times perfectly!