[Lauramalina]

Poor Lofter; this happens to me every two years and I have paper rolodexes and gmail contacts and LinkedIn files and heaps of business cards and disks with csv files on them all over the house. Try to resign yourself to the fact that it's inevitable.

Repeat: CHAOS IS INEVITABLE.

If it makes you feel better, when I left one job of two years and got one of the IT guys to back up my mailbox, and five years later I have never opened any of it. I also still have file folders that say "Last minute prints" from when I printed out "valuable" emails from old jobs, and I rarely look at those. Worse, when I want someone's phone number I can't find it.

However, in the spirit of "pack your traveling case first" here's what I would do.

1) Move your contacts in bulk. I am not a Plaxo person, but I wonder if the easiest solution isn't simply to upload your contacts from Outlook onto Plaxo's servers and then download back onto the Mac -- right? Like why should *you* be dealing with all this CSV stuff? These California techies are all like, "cloud computing is the future" . . . make them do it.

2) Extract data from your current email. You know what you'll need; I'd search "212" "646" and "917" to get phone numbers.

3) set up a web-based email (I use gmail) and forward the 100 emails you like best into it, so you can find them again.

4) Walk away from everything else. I know you'll be nervous you left some important memo somewhere -- I've lost the earliest emails my hubby and I sent each other -- but that's why there's alcohol. Drink.

in sympathy,

ali r.
{downtown broker}