When I select "To" to add contacts, only some show up!

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Beth - 01 Apr 2006 16:58 GMT

I have around 300 contacts in my contacts folder. However, when I create a
new email and click "To" or "Bcc" to add ALL of my contacts, only about half
or so show up! Why can't I choose to email the other contacts?

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William Lefkovics [MVP] - 01 Apr 2006 20:08 GMT

There is a limit of the number of addresses Outlook will allow in the TO:
field. The limit is based on size of data (such as 32,000 bytes), not
number of email addresses.

I would use blocks of 100 contacts or so and email 3 emails.

>I have around 300 contacts in my contacts folder. However, when I create a
> new email and click "To" or "Bcc" to add ALL of my contacts, only about
> half
> or so show up! Why can't I choose to email the other contacts?

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Beth - 01 Apr 2006 20:38 GMT

I understand that! I think you misunderstood my question. Once I click "To"
a list comes up of my contacts to choose from, this is where I don't see all
of my contacts! They aren't all available to choose! WHy?

> There is a limit of the number of addresses Outlook will allow in the TO:
> field. The limit is based on size of data (such as 32,000 bytes), not
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> > half
> > or so show up! Why can't I choose to email the other contacts?

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William Lefkovics [MVP] - 02 Apr 2006 01:02 GMT

Oops... I thought you meant only half of them showed up in the TO field when
you selected ALL of them.

Maybe the address book is corrupted? You might try recreating the address
book...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287563/
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q319901

Someone else may have a better answer.

>I understand that! I think you misunderstood my question. Once I click
>"To"
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
>> > half
>> > or so show up! Why can't I choose to email the other contacts?

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JwT - 02 Apr 2006 06:07 GMT

I've been having Beth's exact problem, and stumbled thru various steps
including those recommended in 319901. Now that I've read the article (which
responds to an error mssg I USED to get, but [Beth and] I are both past that
now), I recapitulated those steps and the problem persists.

An additional symptom [don't know if Beth has this]: when I choose "Address
Book" off the Tools menu, the same tiny subset of my Contacts is displayed
(in my case, this is only 11 names, out of 200 in the actual Contacts folder,
which is fully accessible and updateable. The 11 names are drawn from the
200 Contacts -- in fact, I just verified this because 2 of them were the same
name: there was a duplicate Contact entry, and when I removed it the
duplicate disappeared from the Address Book's list (now 10 of the 199 in
Contacts.)

In the Address Book dialog box, or the Select Names dialog when I click
"To:", there's a field headed "Show Names from the:" and this field contains
"Outlook Address Book" and below it, indented, "Contacts". "Contacts" is
selected by default. Nothing else appears in the list, and if I click on
"Outlook Address Book" it says "No entries in this Address Book".

> Maybe the address book is corrupted? You might try recreating the address
> book...
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> > a list comes up of my contacts to choose from, this is where I don't see
> > all of my contacts! They aren't all available to choose! WHy?

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JwT - 02 Apr 2006 07:50 GMT

Okay, turns out (in MY case) that most of the Contacts had neither email
addresses nor fax numbers, so they didn't count even though their containing
folder was properly in the Address Book. I didn't create the contacts (in
fact, they were sync'd from an iPaq) so I didn't know that til closer
examination. Beth should check to see if this is what's going on in her case.

(This is a bug, if you ask me: it would be better to have the name show up
with an option to edit in the email address when you tried to add it to the
To: field. If nothing else, this would present obscurely-spelled names to
the user so that s/he'd have a better chance of reconstructing the email
address.)

Cf. this article, sugg'd by Russ Valentine for a similar case 2/26/2005:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;287563&Product=ol2002

> >Once I click "To"
> > a list comes up of my contacts to choose from, this is where I don't see
> > all of my contacts! They aren't all available to choose! WHy?

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