Outlook Outlook Contacts dissappear

[AFRANCIS]

I have seen many references to Outlook contacts and managing them, but none regarding the "learning" capabilities of outlook addresses that automatically pop up when we begin to type an address.

We are running Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 with XP Pro on PC's in a wired office network, 10 stations. One person here was very used to typing a single letter or a pair of letters for each contact in order to address his email. Though the contacts are still available if he types in the entire person's name then tabs to another field, and waits for the contact to be found on the server in our Exchange Contacts, these are not the contacts he was used to and they are much more time consuming to use. He does not have a personal address book or a local contact folder and has relied on what the computer has 'learned'.

Does anyone have any idea why this would occur for no apparent reason? We have only done the usual automatic updates to windows, have made no hardware changes, have not reinstalled anything. The only change made in the week before this occurred is that I set up a local backup of his client based documents that were not being backed up by our server backup.

Thanks for any help!

 

[ukJAG]

Not sure if this is relevant but it sounds like the email is picking up an address from some address book or contact list.

In Outlook go to Tools --> Address Book --> Tools --> Options and at the bottom of the Addressing window you will see a section saying:

"When sending mail check names using these address list in the following order"

You will be able to see any contact lists or address books that you have access too. Could it be that it's picking up email addresses from a redundant list?

Probably nothing to do with your particular issue but I've had this where I work on several occasions.

Thanks,

Ian

 

[AFRANCIS]

Thanks Ian,

That was an unrelated solution, but I am learning lots about outlook contacts by having had this problem.

The issue is apparently a corrupted NK2 file in Documents and Settings/Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook. outlook.nk2 is where the "learned" information is stored for these auto filled frequently used addresses.

It is probably a good idea for those heavy Outlook users that rely on the quick entry of addresses to back that file up! There is a great utility available for free called NK2info at www.nk2.info. It will allow edits of the information in that file and allows you to save it as a tab or csv file.

Again, thanks for the try! We can't do anything about our problem as it was a corrupted file that was not backed up- it is a file that is constantly changing and thus prone to occasional corruptions.

 

[ukJAG]

Nice. I learned something today now aswell!