Understanding Auto-Complete versus Contact folders
There is a frequent mis-understanding about the difference between the Outlook AddressBook and auto-complete cache in terms of what contacts are stored and where.
Outlook AddressBook
The Outlook AB is a specialized view of the contact folders that have been configured to be a member of the AB. The first email account configured in the Outlook profile results in the data file for that email account being set as the “default data file” for the profile. This is where the default contact/calendar folders are stored. All custom created contact folders must be manually added to the AB by
– right-clicking on the contact folder
– select properties
– select Outlook Address Book tab
– check the box for “Show this folder as an email address book”
The default contact folder for the Outlook profile is automatically set to be a member of the Outlook AB in which case the checkbox for “Show this folder as an email address book” is greyed out. Also, every Exchange/Outlook.com account will also have its own contact folder in the folder tree and this folder will also automatically become a member of the AddressBook with the checkbox for “show this folder….” also being checked and disabled.
Should note that if a PST file is added to Outlook which at one point was set as the default data file for the profile, the standard contact folder in that folder tree will also automatically be set to be a member of the Outlook AB and cannot be changed.
Outlook Auto-Complete cache
The auto-complete cache gets populated by the recipients entered in the To/Cc/Bcc boxes when sending/replying to an email message. It is completely separate and distinct from the Outlook AddressBook. Outlook does not search the AB when you start typing in the To/CC/Bcc boxes nor are email addresses autpmatically added to the addressbook via this process.
It should also be noted that the value entered in the auto-complete cache is taken from the email header of a received message which means that if the sender of that message only provided an email address as the email display name, that’s all that is going to appear in the auto-complete cache. Outlook does not search the Outlook AddressBook for existing contacts to extract the email display name that you may have configured for that contact. In short, in these cases, you have no control on what appears in the auto-complete cache. When composing a new message and selecting recipients from the Outlook AddressBook, Outlook will populate the auto-complete cache using the Email DisplayName for that contact.
Category: Understanding Outlook
