Added contacts don't appear in Outlook 2002 unless I search for th

[StuartGilbert1948]

I'm using MS Office 2000 on Windows XP Professional. A few years back I
bought a Windows CE mobile phone (an Orange SPV M3100) and the accompanying
CD installed Outlook 2002. I'm not 100% sure if that's the cause of the
problem (more about that below) but since then I've not been able to add to
the contact list that appears in Outlook. New contacts do not appear when I
type them directly into Outlook but they do appear if I then do a search for
them. Using the "Type a contact to find" box brings up the complete contact
card with all the details I typed in. Using the "Find" icon and looking in
contacts (I'm not offered any other contact of address folders) brings up the
contact in the usual "list" format in which all my other contacts appear. I
click the "clear" button to return to my "normal" contact list view.
If I go to "Tools", "Address Book" and click the drop down box "Show names
from the:" I get offered: "Outlook Address Book" - "No entries in this
Address Book", "Contacts" shows my full list of contacts (many duplicated!)
but not the new ones, and "Personal Address Book" which is blank.
If I go to "Tools", "Email Accounts", "Directory - View or change existing
directories or address books" I get "Outlook Address Book" and "Personal
Address Book" both with "Type" MAPI. Incidentally I cannot add any additional
address books - I get a message telling me "This account or directory already
exists and cannot be specified twice"
If I export my contacts to a CSV file they're ALL there including the new
ones and, peculiarly, several I've deleted over the years from my regular
contact list. I've tried deleting all contacts and personal address books and
reimporting (that's probably where the duplicates come from!) but nothing
changes. The original "visible" contacts remain even when I've deleted
address books through the "Tools" Email Accounts" route.

I referred earlier to the fact that I'm not 100% sure the Outlook 2002
installation from the SPV mobile was the start of the problem. I've been
using a Nokia 6680 phone with Nokia PC Suite to sync my contacts and calendar
items for some time now. The Calendar items I add through the phone sync with
no problem but any new contacts I enter on my phone do not appear to sync to
Outlook - although, if I "search" for them, they are there! (And any new
contacts that I add directly in Outlook sync to the phone.)

At some point, either with the SPV M3100 or the Nokia, Outlook started to
open with a request to connect to an LDAP directory (with a "NULL" value and
on Port 3280 or something similar). I'm not on a network and therefore when
trying to solve this problem through MS Knowledgebase articles I followed
advice to delete the LDAP server but this hasn't changed anything except that
occasionally when trying to send an email to one of my "hidden" contacts I
used to get a message saying "unable to contact LDAP server" but I don't get
that now and emails get sent ok.

It seems to me that Outlook has secret access to all the contacts I've added
recently and many that I've deleted over the years but I don't get to see
them. (Unless I search - which is not very convenient) I've tried all the
knowlegebase articles I can find and also followed advice from a magazine to
Install the Outlook Address Book service at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287563 but my "Contacts" folder was already
installed as an email address book. Another oddity is that, through the
various dialogue boxes I change the order in which names are displayed (last,
first, etc) but when I select a contact with the "To" button the list always
come up with the forename first no matter what I do.

Sorry this is so long but I've tried everything I know and I've tried to
include it all here. Hope someone can shed some light on the mysterious
hidden contacts list!

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

Can we establish what exactly you are looking at in outlook when you cannot
find the Contacts:

Show the Navigation Pane on the left of screen and select Folder List. In
that list of Folders, click the Contacts Folder.
Do you have only 1 Contacts Folder showing?
Turn on the Advanced Toolbar (View | Toolbars) and change to the detailed
list view or simple list view.
If you scroll down now, can you see the "missing" Contacts?
If not, on the Advanced Toolbar, click the drop down arrow on the Current
View Window and reset the View.
Now do you see the Contacts?


Regards

Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook

www.judygleeson.com
www.deskdoctors.com

Are you sick of bad email practice? Get a copy of my paper "Implementing
Email Policy" from the Desk Doctors website.

 

[StuartGilbert1948]

Hello Judy,

Thank you, that seems to have done the trick. The folder list view was
already open and I have only one contacts folder. I opened the Advanced View
toolbar and I clicked on the down arrow in the dialogue box and then clicked
on "Detailed Address Cards" (Is that the same as "Detailed Address view"?)
and all the missing contacts appeared. I'm not sure I understand why as the
information in the ones that were already showing (in the plain "Address
Cards" view) and the others that I can now see is often (though not always)
exactly the same! (i.e. not always more "detailed", Names addresses, phone
numbers, etc.)

Another problem arose trying to get to your reply, however this may be an
issue for another forum - but here goes anyway! I got an email message saying
"A Microsoft Community member has responded to your question..." but when I
clicked on the link to "Read and rate the response" I just got a blank web
page. I tried altering security settings, upgrading to IE8 and even tried to
access the reply through Firefox (is that blasphemy in this company?) but
same result. I eventually got through to your reply by re-entering the forum
and re-posting the same question and the thread came up. What a palaver!!
However, original problem sorted now, thank you once again.

Stuart Gilbert