Windows Live Email (Categories and Folders?)

Categories are not the same as groups. There is only one list of all contacts. There are no separate folders, just a single database per sign-in account.

If you were to explain why you need this 'child-parent' arrangement of contacts categories, it would be easier to help you. Windows Live Mail has different, more powerful methods for addressing messages that OE had, but perhaps you haven't yet discovered them.

When you start typing in the To... box, WLMail will look for matches in several contacts fields. You can start typing a contact's Nickname, First name, Last name, Company, e-mail address or any word you've put in the Notes field for that contact. So, if you type bil, for example, the list that appears will include

• contacts whose Nickname starts with Bil, e.g. Billyboy
• contacts whose First name starts with Bil, e.g. Bilbo Baggins
• contacts whose Last name starts with Bil, e.g. Jim Bilko
• contacts whose Company name starts with Bil, e.g. Billingsgate Market
• contacts with an e-mail address starts with bil or having bil straight after a period or the '@' symbol, e.g. 'bilbo at hotmail.com' or 'jim at billingsgate.com' or 'jim.bilko at hotmail.com'
• contacts that have a (non-trivial) word in the Notes field starting with bil, e.g. Malaria and bilharzia expert
• categories whose name includes a word starting with bil

I give my categories names starting with numbers, and put the number at the beginning of the Notes field for each member. This has several advantages:

• They are neatly arranged in the left-hand pane on the contacts window
• They appear at the top of contact picker lists (that you see when you start typing in an address box in a message compose window, or click the To... button)
• Sorting the contacts list by Notes groups all members of categories and sub-categories together.
• Category affiliation survives an export to CSV by virtue of having that affiliation recorded in a contact data field.

Here's an example of some category names:

3 Church

31 Parish Council

311 Clergy

312 Churchwardens

32 Employees

321 Vergers

322 Cleaning staff

323 Gardeners

33 Choir

331 Organists

332 Sopranos

333 Altos

334 Tenors

335 Basses

336 Choristers

...

If I put a three-digit code into the Notes field, sorting by Notes will show contacts in their groups as they appear in the left-hand pane. If I type 3 into the To... box of a message compose window, I will see all those categories listed first, followed by all of their members in alphabetical order. If I type another 3, I'm left with only the choir categories and their members. Type another 3 and only the Altos sub-category and its members are left.

Yeah, unfortunately, I had to create an account and want it deleted.  I also don't want access to contacts when I travel.  For those I need, I upload to the server (netzero) and keep them there.  I would think that one should be able to create categories under categories or at least a higher level above categories, where categories can be children under the parent (business account). 

I guess Im getting rid of Live Mail if I can and going to Outlook.

My Win Live Mail is not associate with any Microsoft Account - nor do I want one. 

I think you have one, because you had to use one to be able to post your question here.

The categories (groups) do contain the correct email addresses per group, as I finally imported a wab file and that did it.

If importing the .wab file also brought in your groups as categories, then it's easy to achieve what you want. Sign in with your Microsoft Account, then import the .wab again. Now decide whether to keep your signed-in contacts as the business set or the private set. Then delete those you don't want from each set leaving, perhaps, a hard core of often-used contacts in both sets so you don't have to change simply to rattle off an email to your wife.

To switch between sets, sign in or sign out.

If you find that signing in creates an unwanted mail account in the left-hand pane, wait until it stops doing anything, then right-click on the account name in the folder pane and select Remove account.

An anecdote: I use three Microsoft Accounts, one to store business contacts, one for family and the third for extra-curricular activities. Last year, I was set upon by armed bandits while wandering around in Africa. They left me unharmed, but relieved me of most of my possessions, including my phone and all but my ready cash. A friendly Australian in a nearby kraal lent me his computer, so within minutes, I had managed to make contact with those I had to and retrieved the phone numbers I needed, all by virtue of storing my contacts lists in my Microsoft Accounts. It's a great comfort to know that my contacts list is safe even though my computer breaks down or is stolen or my house burns down.

My Win Live Mail is not associate with any Microsoft Account - nor do I want one.  The categories (groups) do contain the correct email addresses per group, as I finally imported a wab file and that did it.  Now I just want to have a category with sub categories, or a folder with numerous categories and whatever works.  Strongly trying to get another mail app because of this problem.

This is a situation where signing in in WLMail can help. The contacts list you see when signed in is exclusive to the Microsoft Account you sign in with, so you can use one account for business and another for private contacts. Signing in has no effect on sending and receiving mail.

To transfer contacts from one account to another, use Export > Comma Separated Values (CSV). Sadly, the exported file will not contain category affiliation, so the categories will have to be re-created on import.

Maintaining categories on transfer can be done using vCards (.vcf files), but it's quite labour-intensive. You would have to assess which method (re-creating categories or batch transfer of vCards) involved the least work. Read about how to export contacts from a single category on this page: How do I export contacts from a category?