News Item: : Outlook 2003 address book is empty
(Category: Misc)
Posted by jps
Thursday 06 September 2007 - 10:40:00

Symptoms:
Outlook 2003 has contacts but the address book is empty. When addressing email the addresses will auto-fill when you begin to type an address but if you click on "To/CC/BCC" it comes up with an empty address book. In addition, if you click on the folder properties for the contacts or subfolders under contacts the option to use as an addressbook is shaded.

Solution:
Your contacts will not be deleted by this process but you really ought to back them up anyway just to be safe.
  1. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
  2. Click to select View or change existing directories or address books, and then click Next.
  3. If your Outlook Address Book is listed, select it and click Delete,
  4. Restart Outlook.
  5. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
  6. Click to select View or change existing directories or address books, and then click Next.
  7. Click Add.
  8. Click to select Additional Address Books, and then click Next.
  9. Click to select Outlook Address Book, and then click Next.
  10. Click OK when you receive the prompt that the address book you added will not start until you click Exit from the File menu.
  11. Click Finish.
  12. Click Exit from the File menu, and then restart Outlook.
Now you'll want to verify that the contacts folder(s) are set properly:
  1. On the File menu, point to Folder, and then click Properties for your folder name.
  2. On the Outlook Address Book tab, click to select the Show this folder as an e-mail address book check box, type a descriptive name, and then click OK.
  3. Repeat for any subfolders in contacts
Notes:
I believe in my case this problem cropped up after using the Windows Vista (Business edition) migration expert to copy data from a Windows XP Professional system.

Steps provided above were included in Microsoft Support Article #287563 although that article didn't specifically address the problem existing when the Outlook Address Book service was already present.

This news item is from Free-Office-Software.com
( http://free-office-software.com/news.php?extend.9 )