Shared Contacts Master Categories question

[bugman]

I need to have 50 users on Outlook/Exchange specify a number of contacts
that need to be exported to another system. I had my Exchange admin
give me shared access to each of the mailboxes in question. My plan was
to go through each set of contacts, and add a new category to the master
categories for each user. When I got the the second contact, the
keyword identifier was already there! It looks like Outlook/Exchange is
allowing me access to the correct contacts, but is using my master
category list. How can I access and update each users category master
list? Isn't this kept on Exchange?
thanks

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha bugman,

No, the master category list is maintained on the individual machines in
the registry.

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/olcat.htm

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenote.html

 

[Peter Durkee]

No, it's in the registry at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Categories, for
Office 2003, with the 11.0 being replaced by something else for other
versions of Office. Since you're going into the other mailboxes while logged
in as yourself, you're always seeing the same master list, but the real
owners of the mailboxes won't see that list. You could export that reg key,
and have everyone import it, but you'd run the risk of blowing away any
changes they've made previously to their master lists.

You might think about giving them all another Contacts folder into which
they could copy the Contacts that should be exported.

-Peter

 

[bugman]

No, it's in the registry at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Categories, for
Office 2003, with the 11.0 being replaced by something else for other
versions of Office. Since you're going into the other mailboxes while logged
in as yourself, you're always seeing the same master list, but the real
owners of the mailboxes won't see that list. You could export that reg key,
and have everyone import it, but you'd run the risk of blowing away any
changes they've made previously to their master lists.

You might think about giving them all another Contacts folder into which
they could copy the Contacts that should be exported.

-Peter

Good ideas, I spoke to the Exchange administrator and he said we might
be able to push a registry key change out to all the users. Exploring
that now, and will test it first!

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha bugman,

You undoubtedly can but be aware that you'll probably delete whatever categories
the individual user has created.

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenote.html

 

[bugman]

Good ideas, I spoke to the Exchange administrator and he said we might
be able to push a registry key change out to all the users. Exploring
that now, and will test it first!

Not so easy, the new category appears in alpha order in the existing
binary key. I don't know if we can add to this key, or any attempt
would just overwrite the whole list.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

A script to read the registry, append the master categories, then write it
back?

 

[bugman]

No, it's in the registry at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Categories, for
Office 2003, with the 11.0 being replaced by something else for other
versions of Office. Since you're going into the other mailboxes while logged
in as yourself, you're always seeing the same master list, but the real
owners of the mailboxes won't see that list. You could export that reg key,
and have everyone import it, but you'd run the risk of blowing away any
changes they've made previously to their master lists.

You might think about giving them all another Contacts folder into which
they could copy the Contacts that should be exported.

-Peter

Not being well versed in Exchange, how easy would it be to send another
contacts folder to 50 distributed users?

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook],

That should work. Just wanted to make sure that he wasn't just planning
to write .REG files to the client machines without preserving their existing
settings.

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenote.html

 

[Peter Durkee]

Not being well versed in Exchange, how easy would it be to send another
contacts folder to 50 distributed users

Not too bad, you could use exmerge for this. Create a PST with the new empty
Contacts to be Exported folder, create 50 copies with appropriate names, and
exmerge them out. Even easier would be creating a single Public Folder and
have everyone copy the Contacts to be exported into that.

-Peter

 

[bugman]

Aloha Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook],

That should work. Just wanted to make sure that he wasn't just planning
to write .REG files to the client machines without preserving their existing
settings.

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenote.html

A script to read the registry, append the master categories, then
write it back?

I solved the problem in a low tech way. I wrote a document with large
fonts and big pictures showing the users who to add a category to their
master list and then how to flag a contact with that category. I then
took it home, handed it to my 9 year old and had her do it. She had no
problems so my users should be OK. These are all rainmakers so they
want everything on a silver platter. Whats the over/under on how many
help desk calls I get on this?