Conversion tool/Recovery of windows live mail .edb to other file?

**Niclo Iste** · February 2nd, 2011, 02:58 PM

I have a client who needs their contact list from their old hard drive. Exporting isn't an option as it was failing motherboard. Basically from what I can get is the contacts are saved as a .edb and I need to convert it to a .wab or .csv file. I found this program but I fear it's useless since MS released a newer version/update for Windows Live Mail. Does anyone know of a way to get this done or of a program that could do what this old one used to do?

**Ferrit** · February 2nd, 2011, 05:50 PM

Well if the harddrive is alright which is whats indicated and its actually a dead motherboard. All you need to do is connect the old drive and copy the contacts folder in the user profile

**Niclo Iste** · February 2nd, 2011, 07:26 PM

I've tried that, and for some reason it just won't take. I got all their mail and settings back just the stupid contacts part isn't doing like it should with that method.

**Ferrit** · February 3rd, 2011, 02:12 AM

Weird cause usually all ya have to do is "copy" them into the contacts folder

**Niclo Iste** · February 3rd, 2011, 04:23 PM

So in other words if that fails then there are no answers.

**MobilePCPhysician** · February 3rd, 2011, 05:59 PM

http://www.fileguru.com/apps/open_edb_file_contacts

**Niclo Iste** · February 4th, 2011, 01:20 PM

Thanks for the suggestion mobilepcphysician. I guess the exchange .edb and windows live mail .edbs though similar extensions are two different formats. This did answer the question of can those types of tools recover it, which we now know they cannot.

**futuretech** · February 4th, 2011, 10:12 PM

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...d-5d673dfd7a5c
This talks about making a registry entry change after moving the EDB file to see the contacts

**slgrieb** · February 6th, 2011, 08:55 PM

Unfortunately, it isn't unusual for failing hardware to result in corrupted files being written to a hard drive. You might run a data recovery to see if you can retrieve an earlier version of the list, but otherwise, you probably can't recover the contacts.