About this video

Addresses in this video are examples. Email Finder, Bulk Finder and file verification need a paid account.

Video transcript

1. 00:00Two kinds of job

   The people you need are often in your own mailbox, on a public page, or one company pattern away. Here's how to pull them out, and what to do before you send. There are two jobs here. Extracting means pulling addresses you already hold, out of Outlook. Finding means working out an address you don't have yet. Both end at the same place. A file that isn't ready to send.

2. 00:25Extract from Outlook

   Start with Outlook. It keeps addresses in two places. The Contacts folder holds people somebody bothered to save. Your mail history holds everyone you actually wrote to. So a clean Contacts export can still miss most of the real list. For saved contacts in classic Outlook on Windows, go to File. Open and Export. Import and Export. Choose Export to a file, then Comma Separated Values. Pick the Contacts folder, and check the field mapping before you finish. In Outlook on the web, go to People, open Manage contacts, then Export contacts. You can take everything or one folder. If vendors and customers sit in separate folders, export them separately. Mail history takes a different route. In classic Outlook, run the same export, but pick a mail folder instead of Contacts. Sent Items gives you who you wrote to. Inbox gives you who wrote to you. Clear the default fields and map only the From, To and CC addresses. For a small pull, search is quicker. In Outlook on the web, use from and to in the search box, then copy what you need. For a whole mailbox, scripts can go deeper, but someone has to review the permissions first.

3. 01:32Find an address

   Now the second job. You have a name and a company, but no address. Start with what's already public. A profile's contact details, a company team page, a press mention, an author bio. One visible clue beats a dozen guesses. No luck? Work out the company's pattern. Is it first dot last, or first initial and last name? Back the guess with a second public signal, like another published address at that company. When the list grows, manual lookups stop working. BillionVerify's Email Finder takes a name and a company domain, and returns a verified work email. It costs 10 credits when it finds one, and nothing when it doesn't. Bulk Finder does the same from a CSV file. Both need a paid account. However you get there, keep a record of where each address came from. Stop at what you need. If a published business inbox is enough for your message, you don't need more.

4. 02:25Clean the file

   Now the file. Message history is messy. The same person shows up as sender, recipient and display name, sometimes all in one cell. Clean it in this order. Split combined cells. Strip the display names. Lowercase and trim. Remove duplicates on the address itself. Tag personal and role addresses. Filter rows with no at sign. Then save as CSV, UTF-8.

5. 02:50Check before you send

   A tidy file still isn't a safe file. It's just more organized. An old correspondent may have left that company. A guessed address may not exist at all. So verify before you import anything. Upload the file and map the email column. Then act on each result. Remove invalid. Exclude disposable. Decide whether role addresses belong. Hold catch-all and unknown back from your main send. Match the check to the job. One important contact, use a single check. It works with your free daily credits. A whole file needs a paid account. New addresses coming through a form are a job for the API. Last step. These files are sensitive. Delete the temporary exports when you're done, and keep the final report somewhere with access control. Extract what you have. Find what you can defend. Clean it, check it, and only then send.

6. 03:40Get started free

   20 free credits every day you use your account, up to 600 a month. No credit card required. Start at billionverify.com.

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