Saving contact photos in Windows Live

Can it be done?

Nope. Windows Live does not allow you to replace a user's contact photo, only they can set/change it.

WLM itself doesn't have that option. "Messenger Live Plus" [an add-on software for WLM] however can do that. A WLM 2011 compatible version of Messenger Plus is supposed to be released today, hopefully it will still have the option.

@longzheng:

So you can't have a contact photo unless the person in your contact list has a live account and has set up a photo?

Isn't that just a bit daft?

1 hour ago, Ray7 wrote

@longzheng:

So you can't have a contact photo unless the person in your contact list has a live account and has set up a photo?

Isn't that just a bit daft?

This is very daft and indeed and it is my major issue with Windows Live Contacts and more generally with Windows Live.

The problem is that at some point Windows Live decided to become a social network and it made a huge mess between the contacts of your address book and your Messenger friends. The reasoning behind the picture problem you describe is that it was designed to pull the information only from the Messenger friends. Beside the picture problem, once your contact becomes a friend on Messenger, his/her contact information will be tied to the contact information the person puts in his/her profile (with the displeasing side effect that if your friend decides to remove or simply change some information from his/her profile, the information will also disappear or will be changed on your address book, brilliant).

Now, I actually like that the Live Contacts can act as an aggregator from multiple social networks (it is kind of handy to see your friend's birthday even if you did not enter it in the contact information), but why should the Messenger contacts be any different than Facebook ones and take ownership of my address book?

@giovanni: I guess this is what happens when strategic, customer-driven thinking is overtaken by panic.

Okay, I guess the easiest thing to do is just get everything on to Google before they mess up even further.

@Ray7: I really hope not. All they need to do is to keep the information separated like they already do for Facebook and other social networks: when the information on the soacial network is different from the one you entered, it appears below the relative field with a  little icon. That way I did catch a few wrong birthhday dates and a few updated cellphone numbers without the darn thing "updating" it for me without knowing or approving the change.

Is there a quick way to dump all your contacts into a Google address book?

@Ray7: You can export a CVS from Hotmail (use the manage menu under contacts) and import it in Gmail.

Not sure why you want to save your contacts photos. They are so tiny. I only add the photo on my phone for my family members. The rest of contact photos are link from Facebook/Hotmail.