How to edit adhoc contact group members in Outlook 2013-2016
Starting with Outlook ‘2013, the use of contact cards were introduced altering the behavior of what many people were used to in previous versions. For example, if the contact folder was set to a non-list type of view (i.e. People or card) and you clicked on a contact, a contact card would appear instead of the usual contact detail screen similar to
click on a contact in a folder using <People> view such as
would result in the following being displayed
In order to get to the full contact detail screen, you would need to go to the contact Reading Pane and select <View Source>
(to get to a contact item’s detail screen directly, you would need to set the contact folder view to be one of the “list” types i.e. <Phone>)
This change, had a side-effect on the ability (or more accurately the “inability”) to edit information for “ad-hoc” members of Outlook Contact Groups. An “ad-hoc” group member is one where the member is not a contact item. Instead of the usual “edit window” appearing as was the case in previous versions of Outlook as shown below
you would be presented with a contact card similar to the one shown below that would only allow the addition of the member as a new contact. In short, there is no provision to edit the member’s name and email info requiring the member to be deleted and re-added.
Until this behavior gets changed, the workaround solution to this problem is to make a registry modification so that OL’2013 / OL’2016 uses the legacy behavior. This is a simple process which does not require you to open the registry and make changes directly.
- Select the registry entry that is applicable to the version of Outlook in use
- highlight and copy everything between the lines (but do not include the lines).
- Open any text editor (i.e. Notepad) and paste the copied information.
- Save the copied info to a file with a <.reg> extension (instead of .txt – this is important othewise the next step won’t work)
- once saved, click on the file and answer yes to the questions that are presented.
for OL’2013
—————————————–
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Contactcard]
“turnonlegacygaldialog”=dword:00000001
—————————————–
for OL’2016
—————————————–
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Contactcard]
“turnonlegacygaldialog”=dword:00000001
—————————————–
Once the registry has been updated, OL’2013/’2016 will revert to showing contact info as was the case in previous versions of Outlook. This will also mean that even if you have the contact folder set to a non-list view (i.e. People), the contact detail screen will open up instead of the compact contact card when you click on a contact item.
Category: Outlook - How To
