How do I sync Contact photos to Outlook.com

Anonymous
2012-09-22T05:33:53+00:00

Is there a way to have contact pictures sync to Outlook.com Contacts/People? When I use the hotmail connector sync my contacts from Desktop Outlook, the cantacts show in Outlook.com, but without the photos. When I have my phone contacts download from Outlook.com there are no photos shown on the phone. If I assign a photo to a contact on the phone, it does not sync back to outlook.com.

I switched from google to outlook.com, but may have to switch back if I cant find a way to fix the outlook.com contact photos. This worked fine on GMail.

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Contacts

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-09-12T12:07:22+00:00

    Is there a way to have contact pictures sync to Outlook.com Contacts/People? When I use the hotmail connector sync my contacts from Desktop Outlook, the cantacts show in Outlook.com, but without the photos. When I have my phone contacts download from Outlook.com there are no photos shown on the phone. If I assign a photo to a contact on the phone, it does not sync back to outlook.com.

    I switched from google to outlook.com, but may have to switch back if I cant find a way to fix the outlook.com contact photos. This worked fine on GMail.

    3 years since this was first asked for in this thread (and in others).

    Countless pointless promises to feed back to the MS developers, and countless total misunderstandings of MS moderators later, and I still can't get profile images into outlook.com

    MS, you are ridiculous. Thank you for your continued efforts to make me stay a Google customer for so many years, rather than to start using your offerings.

    P.S. could you please explain your business model to me?

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-09-10T00:01:11+00:00

    the photos you add to contacts in outlook 2013, or on your phone, are *synced* to outlook.com. they just aren't *visible* on outlook.com. i can't speak to ios or windows phone devices, but I have outlook 2013 and the windows 8 mail/people app on three different PCs connected to a Hotmail account,, and I have several android devices connected to the same Hotmail account. I see the contact photos-which i have configured - in all apps on all PCs and devices. this means the photos are all being stored with those contacts in my outlook.com account, and are being synced to and from those apps and devices. the only place I don't see the contact photos is in a web browser at outlook.com/people.live.com. but I never use the web interface anyway, because I have outlook 2013 and the windows 8 mail app on all my computers.

    That was a very useful observation. I too have and 98% of the time use Outlook 2013.  So the impact to my life beyond the something appears to not be working is minimal. I don't think that I am overstating though that leaving out the basic functionality of uploading user selected photos; something you can do everywhere else is a stupendous blunder or if it was by design because of their social media connectivity mission it is equally bad; to assume that everyone will want their account connected to social media. The fact that people have been asking for this to be corrected for 3 years with no action or even definitive answer about what their plans are is really bad business and rude. I have been using Outlook for 15 years and it has been a real love hate relationship because it is better than any of the alternatives yet...not quite there! Frustrating! Sorry to put my rant on you...your information was helpful. {~!~}

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-06-10T14:56:00+00:00

    What's funny to me is that the contact photos was the ONLY reason I ever connected the accounts to begin with. I hated having my calendar clogged up with one or more events almost every day of the year for a Facebook friend that I haven't talked in person to in a decade (redundant since Facebook notifies me of each one anyway), and had to turn off my birthdays calendar altogether in exchange for having contact photos.

    Now with Facebook connect going away, Microsoft HAS to do something about contact photos, because the feature is going from mostly useless to COMPLETELY USELESS.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-06-10T14:25:30+00:00

    How will this functionality be affected now that Facebook connect support is stopping? Are we just going to have blank photo tiles for all of our contacts now, with no ability to do anything about it?

    Yep

    Because, despite YEARS of warning of this api change, MS have chosen to do naff all about it.

    But as they've also.chosen to do nowt about adding non fb photos to contacts, it's just a big pile of fail.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-06-10T14:16:23+00:00

    How will this functionality be affected now that Facebook connect support is stopping? Are we just going to have blank photo tiles for all of our contacts now, with no ability to do anything about it?

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