OK, start with the basics.  I NEVER logon to Windows Live Mail; my experience is that it totally kluges my contacts; I end up with many duplicates and the online eliminate dups tool, is under powered, searches only for identical names, choses same names, different email addresses etc.  It's also infernally slow, only does a few at a time.  So, I NEVER logon, so my question has only to do with the WLMail client on my PC.

FWIW, I am running:  Version 2012 (Build 16.4.3508.0205)

 I understand that the WLMail contacts file is under C: ... Users... *.edb (found this in an old thread.

I have historical issues with many duplicates in my contacts list which I have laboriously manually removed. 

Recently, I had to have my hard drive wiped and Windows 7 and WLMail re-installed.  Apparently the WLMail contacts file kept all the duplicates names that I eliminated (but must mark them in some way so they don't display).  So, when my computer service re-loaded the contacts file, all the duplicates reappeared.  I went from about 1,200 contacts to 5,000+

I thought that I was cleaning these up in a file located at:  C:\Users\Owner\Contacts  but none of the changes show in WLMail - and I now think that this is probably the location of the Windows contacts but not the WLMail contacts.  (They do not synch and can't be substituted for each other <learned this from other threads). 

all the *.edb files on my machine appear to be under the various user names, but have a file name like this:   WLCalendarStore.edb  Is this a problem?  I may have created a problem in marking my ?WLMail contacts file to share with all the logons on my computer.

I think I want to delete all the contacts in WLMail and import the contacts from this other (probably) Windows contacts file).

So, a couple question:
1.  My contact files don't contain a ton of extra information, some with two emails per name, a very few phone numbers, a very few with a mailing address.  Will all this carry over - particularly the names?  I read some threads that suggested importing from Windows contacts drops all the names;  that would be really ugly!

2.  Within WLMail if I select all of the contacts (after backing up, of course) and delete them - are they really gone ...or just marked not to display.  I read some threads that suggested that they magically reappear.  I don't want that to happen.  I supposed I could delete all the .edb files.
What is the best way to truly delete all the contacts from WLMail?  Will they really be gone?

Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks in advance.
PS:  after writing this I looked at my backup in the cloud (which has not been updated since computer repair.  Rather than the *.edb file I was expecting; I found two files:  edbres00001.jrs & edbres00002.jrs.  Now I'm wondering if these are the WLMail contact files - altho both have along ago "Date modified" dates.  
I also see files named like this in my pc with very recent "Date Modified" dates.  However they appear in several strings:  C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Calendars\DBStore\LogFile
and
C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail
and
C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Calendars\<my email address>\DBStore\LogFiles

So, to be successful about this do I have to delete ALL of these?  

FWIW: I would prefer if Under the category Microsoft account, Outlook.com, Skydrive there was a Windows Live Mail Product 'choice' so the separation would be clearer than 'Mail' which is too broad a category.

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