Share Contacts on one PC with two users

[Guest]

On a single home PC, I'm attempting to have two WinXP Home users (called
"adult" with Admin privileges and "kids" with Limited privileges) share a
single email account and contacts using Outlook 2003. That is, from two
different WinXP accounts (logins), we would like mail and contacts to be the
same. The mail folders (single .pst in Shared Documents folder which has
"full control") in both accounts are working okay but I'm having trouble with
Contacts.

Both users see the same contacts when clicking on the Contact tab in the
Outlook Bar (left pane with Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, etc). However,
on the "kids" account, when creating a new mail message and clicking on "To"
or "Cc" to add addressees, this message occurs. "The address list could not
be displayed. The Contacts folder associated with this address list could
not be opened; it may have been moved, deleted, or you do not have
permissions." The same message occurs with Tools/Address Book. Both of
these work okay on the Adult account. Temporarily, I changed the Kids
account to an Admin type account but the same message occurred.

I did a search but didn't see a direct answer. Help is much appreciated.

Tim

 

[Oliver Vukovics]

Dear Tim,

delete the Outlook Addressbook on the "Kids" Account (Profil) and add it
again after a restart of Outlook.

Did you changed the PST file of the kids?

The message "The Contacts folder associated with this address list could not
be opened" comes, if you changed the PST file and the "contact folder" is
the contact folder of another PST file. I would delete the Outlook
Addressbook and add it agian, then the "links" to the wrong contact foldrs
will be deleted/updated.

Normally this will work.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Remember that the Outlook Address Book is a very frail, dysfunctional tool.
I'm not sure Microsoft ever really intended for people to use it. Any time
you move your data or make any other changes to your Profile, it will get
lost and cease to function. The first thing you should do after any change
you make is reset it so it can find its data source. That is easy to do
here:
Tools > E-mail accounts > View or change existing directories or address
books > Outlook Address Book > Change. >

It's usually not necessary to remove and re-add it, but that works too.

 

[Guest]

Russ and Oliver,

Thank-you so much for the help which worked great and was very easy.

I followed the path below on the kids account, deleted both Contact entries,
closed this dialog, clicked on Contacts in the Outlook Bar to display
contacts, right-clicked on the word Contacts in the "title bar" which is
just above the contact entries, selected Properties, selected the Outlook
Address Book tab, and checked the box for "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book". Then, Tools/Address Book contains the same information as
Contacts and "To/Cc" works.

"Very Happy Camper" Tim

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Bingo.
Save this recipe. You'll need it again.