Question about Outlook Express

Introduction: After realizing that Office Outlook performed "poorly" with the "hotmail connector" I uninstalled it and transferred everything related to Hotmail over to Live Mail - that is after i decided to re-try Live Mail again. While Live Mail imported folders, emails and accounts w/settings from Office Outlook virtually flawlessly, it did not import my address book with contacts. To this end I manually exported them from Outlook into a cvs file and then imported that cvs file in Live Mail and an address book filled with contacts was created in Live Mail.

Problem: However, those contacts in the Address Book are not showing up when I create a New Mail Message in Live Mail. With the Live Mail Address Book Open i can see a listing of my contacts. But when I flip over to the blank email message and click the "to" button, the contact list is blank. Clicking around that blank contacts dialog window trying to find a method to select or link the address book is helpful as well. It is though the address book and the contacts are 2 separate sub-programs in Live Mail. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. I don't recall why i gave up Live Mail a couple of years ago, but perhaps this is one of the annoying quirks that annoys the **** out of us.

Solution 1 - Incidentally, i don't use messenger so its connection is disable in Live Mail at this time.

Solution 2 - Repair Live mail resulted in no change.

Thanks for any suggestions or solutions (or opinions).

ps: I am impressed that Live Mail works much "MUCH" better for hotmail than Office Outlook.   I almost lost all of my data in Outlook several times, but if it were not for system restore that saved them (and my sanity).

Office Outlook works much better and appears stable now without any connections to Hotmail.