[darniil]

tl;dr: How do I backup my contacts from my phone to something that is not my current Microsoft account?

Long version:

At some point in the past few years, my school decided to change their email system to use Live@edu. As near as I could tell at the time, this turned our email into something Microsoft-related.

When I got my first Windows Phone (7; Samsung Focus), and it asked me for a Microsoft account, I entered my school email address. Things worked great.

About two years later, I got a new Windows Phone (8; Lumia 920), and continued to use my school email account as my Microsoft account, since that's where my contacts were saved.

Now, earlier this month, I've received notice that my school is going to deactivate my email account. I want to be able to save the contacts that I've added over the years, but when I log in to the web-based interface, I can't find anything that would let me export my contacts. I've Googled for ideas on how to do this, but the articles I've found all seem to be out of date.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can export/save my contacts - either from my phone directly, or from my email account - so that I won't lose them when my school deactivates my account?

Thanks for any help that can be offered.

[Paladinleeds]

If I remember correctly, login via your usual entry, go to the People section (this is all on the website btw), then on one of those menus is an export option I am sure. Also, you'll need to login on an Xbox to transfer all your purchases before your uni deactivate your email. Create a new Outlook.com account for this.

[darniil]

For my Hotmail account, which I created in hopes that I could use it as the destination for my contacts, I do have a People section with an export option.

However, my school's web interface seems to be using Microsoft Outlook Web App, which has a very different interface and no People section.

Thank you for the reply. I'll keep digging around. Hopefully I'll get this resolved before before the 29th.

[Laura Knotek]

For my Hotmail account, which I created in hopes that I could use it as the destination for my contacts, I do have a People section with an export option.

However, my school's web interface seems to be using Microsoft Outlook Web App, which has a very different interface and no People section.

Thank you for the reply. I'll keep digging around. Hopefully I'll get this resolved before before the 29th.

Have you tried contacting your university's IT department?

[BeaverJuicer]

If you have access to a copy of MS Outlook, you can drag and drop mass contacts between folders and contact lists.

[thed]

I'm pretty sure there's no way to export contacts from Outlook Web Access. Do you have a copy of Outlook on your PC? If you do, you should be able to connect to the server with Outlook and then export your contacts using Options -> Advanced -> Export.

[darniil]

My school's response was, paraphrasing, "Yeah, we looked around for five minutes and couldn't find a way to export, either. You're out of luck."

I'll give the Outlook thing a try when I get home. Thanks, everyone.

[HeyCori]

If I remember correctly, login via your usual entry, go to the People section (this is all on the website btw), then on one of those menus is an export option I am sure. Also, you'll need to login on an Xbox to transfer all your purchases before your uni deactivate your email. Create a new Outlook.com account for this.

Yes, this is a very important step. You want to make sure all your license information is transferred to another email account. Here's some more information.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live/marketplace-and-purchasing/download-content

Yes, you can transfer content licenses from one console to another once every four months. If your console was recently repaired or if you’ve purchased a new console, use the license transfer option on your console to transfer content licenses. Here’s how:

1. On your console, sign in to Xbox LIVE using the gamertag that you used to purchase the content.
   
   • Don't know your gamertag? See Download, move, or delete your Xbox LIVE profile.
   • Need to find your Microsoft account? See Find your Microsoft account.
   • Can't remember the password for your Microsoft account? See Recover your Microsoft account password.
   
   
2. Go to Settings and select Account.
3. Go to Your Billing Options and select License Transfer.
4. Follow the instructions to transfer the content licenses.

After the licenses are transferred, you need to download the content again to update the local licenses. Then the content can be used by other profiles on your console and when you’re not connected to Xbox LIVE.
For information about how to download previously purchased content, see Buy and redownload content from Xbox LIVE.

[Kevyn Degia]

right click on a contact/person in the contact panel should allow you to forward the contact as an attachment. It works on multiple selection too

[darniil]

@Paladinleeds and HeyCori:
Regarding the Xbox stuff you two posted, I'm not sure if it applies to me, since I don't have an Xbox, but I wanted to ask for clarification in case it did still apply to me. (Better safe than sorry.) When you two talk about purchases and licenses and such, do you mean for apps I've downloaded?

@Kevyn Degia:
That certainly got my contacts from my school email to my Hotmail account. Thanks. I'm still going to give Outlook a try, too, and see which one might be the easier route when it comes to importing.

[HeyCori]

The license for any movies, music, or apps that you paid for is currently linked to your @edu account. I can only assume that once it's deactivated you will lose those licenses. I haven't seen a case where someone's email was deactivated so I'm not entirely sure how this will play out. You may want to give Microsoft a call to see what your options are.

[darniil]

I thought I'd post an update here to let people know how this has been progressing - in case anyone was interested, or in case someone finds this thread in a search later on down the line. (I usually don't mind being a guinea pig if it's something trivial and doesn't overly inconvenience me. Feel free to keep watching as the experiment unfolds.)

March 29th came and went, and it appeared as if my university was late on deactivating my account. I was still receiving emails to that address, and to this day (May 7th), I still can receive email at that account. (One of the first things I did when I got that account was set it to forward to an address I checked frequently.)

About a month or so later, I decided to try logging in to my school's OWA, via their suggested link, as well as via live.com. I was unable to sign in, but I didn't think that was much of a problem due to email still flowing/forwarding.

Fast forward to the past week, and I have updates for some of my apps. I tried updating them, but I got the following message: "The Microsoft account service is unavailable right now. Try again later." I thought this was just a glitch in the Store, so I ignored it for a few days. It never went away.

I decided to check my "email + accounts" to see if anything was odd there. My Microsoft account (and my school account, since they're the same) gave an error message saying something about a server being misconfigured and to contact technical support. (I forget the exact wording; it's changed now.) Now, however, it shows a "Not up-to-date" message in my theme color under my account. Going into the settings for those accounts shows me the following:

Microsoft error
Last updated about a month ago
There's a problem with
sn2prd0102.outlook.com. Try again later.
Last tried about an hour ago
Error code: 85010001

Closing that lets me access my Microsoft account settings, but I can't change the username field. Also, since it's the Microsoft account on the phone, I can't delete it and recreate it.

Going back to my OWA at this point gives me the following error (which is a new one, from maybe the past week or two):

Sign-in is blocked
Sign-in with ***@***.edu is blocked for one of these reasons:
Someone entered the wrong password too many times.
If you signed up for this account through an organization, you might not be able to use it yet.

There's a link to "Reset [my] password", which sends an email to an address I set up previously. Using the password reset link in the email, however, takes me to a page saying:

There's a temporary problem
There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later.

It never says anything else.

My university is apparently upgrading their email to Office 365 on the 24th. Since my phone can still make and receive calls, I'm not too worried about things at the moment. However, I would like to try to update my Microsoft account on the phone to use my Hotmail account (with all of my old .edu account's contacts moved over). Hopefully there's a way to do this without doing a factory reset. If anyone has any suggestions, my ears are open.

Right now, I'm going to try doing a little more research, see what options are available. Additionally, I'm thinking of waiting until the 24th, trying to log in to OWA again, and if it fails, contacting my university's tech support department and seeing if I can get somehow get them to "jiggle some cables" and grant me access again.