Copy and duplicate a contact in Outlook Express

Whenever you add a contact in Outlook Express, it is stored in your address book, and can be manually updated at any point (how to edit contacts information in Outlook Express). But what if you want to create a new contact whose information closely matches the profile of an existing contact? Fortunately, you don't have to start over and retype that new contact's information: the Outlook Express address book includes a feature that allows you to clone and create a duplicate copy of an existing contact, as you'll learn in this tutorial.

Copy contacts from your Outlook Express address book

Follow these steps to make a copy of a contact in your address book:

• Once you are inside Outlook Express, click on the Tools menu, and choose "Address Book" (alternatively, press the corresponding keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+B).
• Outlook Express will open the address book window in the forefront, and display your shared contacts, contact folders, and contact categories inside the left pane. If you do not see right away the contact you want to copy, select the appropriate folder / contact category on the left.
• Now, right-click on the contact you want to duplicate, and choose "Copy" from the context menu. The Windows clipboard now hold that contact's information in multiple formats: if you were to paste in Notepad, it would paste all the information you have setup for this particular contact!
  
  
  Tip: unlike most files and items in Windows XP, you cannot copy and duplicate a contact by dragging it with the control key ("Ctrl") held down - this will move the contact.
• To create a duplicate copy of this contact inside the address book, just right-click on an empty area on the right (not on an existing contact), and choose "Paste" from the context menu - nothing will happen, because you already have a contact with this exact information (and that contact's profile dialog will open). So just drag the contact, and drop it above another folder on the left, and Outlook Express will duplicate that contact.

There are more convoluted ways of duplicating contacts in Outlook Express, but this is the easiest, and you don't need to export contact files, modify them, and re-import them into the email program, which would allow for more efficient duplication if you want to create copies of multiple people in your address book at the same time.