Changing your MSN passport address

About 9 months ago I left the UK, and my previous employer. I had set up a MSN messenger account with their domain name which was fine for exchanging links between others in the office and general copy/pasting of code etc. As time went by more and more addresses outside of work found their way onto my contact list.

I had wondered about changing the address before but didn’t want the hassle of having to re-add everyone and potentially lose contact with people who were in the IT industry. A visiting friend recently mentioned that it could be done via Microsoft’s passport.com website. I decided to take the plunge.

The change itself was straightforward and I was sent an email to my newly chosen personal address to confirm the change, however all of my contacts on MSN messenger appeared to be offline. This I knew was not right, but it seemed that there was no option to send an update out. I googled and based on http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_use_windowsmsn_messeng.htm I found that these steps worked for me:

1. Open MSN messenger, sign on to your new account.
2. From the Contacts menu, choose Save contacts to list.
3. Delete each of your contacts from your contacts list (it’s a manual process)
4. From the Contacts menu, choose Import contacts from a file.
5. All your contacts will be added again, and they’ll all be notified of your change of address.

Simple really, but the passport.com site seemed to imply that this would happen automatically. Maybe it does under some circumstances but I had to go through these steps.

Good luck!