Hello all. I found a post with the title 'No "Outlook Address Book"
tab?' dated February 14, 2006 that appeared to address the issue I am
having. I tried to post a reply but apparently you can't reply after
six months, so I am creating a new post.

First, let me explain what I am trying to accomplish. I am a network
administrator in a department of around sixty people. We are using MS
Outlook 2003 on Windows XP SP2 and our Exchange email is outsourced. I
am assuming they are using Exchange 2003.

Up until recently, we were using NT 4.0 with Outlook 2000 and an old HP
product for the email server. Our department has quite a few
distribution lists, as well as cell phone and pager lists. Also, we are
part of a larger corporate campus here so we also need to maintain
lists of a large number of distribution lists containing email
addresses outside our department. Each month we would update our
contact lists, create a .pst file and then have each user wipe out
their old contacts and re-import the new .pst file. Obviously, this is
not a good way to do things.

I asked our email administrators for a way to centrally manage one set
of distribution lists/contacts where each user would automatically see
the updates in their address book. The email administrator set up a
functional mailbox and told me to go to each user computer and open
this mailbox as an additional mailbox. For the most part, this works
but with one major exception-- although the users can see the contacts
from this mailbox once this additional mailbox is opened, the contacts
do not appear in the address book. Normally, you need to go to the
"properties" for a contact folder, select the "Outlook Address Book"
tab and click the checkbox to make the list show up in the address
book. The problem is that when the users open these distribution lists,
only two tabs appear: "General" and "Home Page".

The only way the users can use these shared distribution lists is to go
to "Contacts", navigate to the distribution list they want to use and
right-click and select "New message to contact". Although this works,
the users would like to be able to select a distribution list from the
"To:" box or the address book.

In the February 14 posting from Sue Mosher that I referred to above,
the following solution is given:

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" The process of adding another user's Contacts folder to your own
address
book display is more involved than a simple check box. You will need to
be
able to create -- at least temporarily -- an Outlook profile that opens
another user's mailbox as the primary mailbox. Proceed with these steps
while logged in under your own Windows account, not the other user's:

1. Create an Outlook profile that connects directly to the other user's
mailbox, not your own, and start Outlook with that profile.

2. On the Properties dialog for the other user's Contacts folder, make
sure
that it's set to display in the Outlook Address Book and give it a
display
name other than contacts, such as Joe's Contacts.

3. Close Outlook.

4. In Control Panel | Mail, edit the *same profile* (i.e. the one from
Step
1) to change the mailbox from the other user's to your own.

5. Still working with the same profile, on the Advanced tab of the
Exchange
Server service, add the other user's mailbox as a secondary mailbox.

6. Restart Outlook, and you should see the Joe's Contacts in your
Outlook
Address Book as well as your own Contacts folder. "

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While this solution works for the most part (sometimes it takes
multiple attempts due to other profile issues), I find it hard to
believe that this is the only way to accomplish the centrally managed
distribution lists. One specific question I have is why is it necessary
to create that profile on each machine and then edit that profile? Why
can't I just open the additional mailbox in each user's current profile
and have the distribution lists show up in the address book? There is
no good reason that we should have to go through all this just to get
the lists to appear in the address book. This method creates a huge
volume of work. For each user, it is necessary to create a new profile
and then redo all the user's personal ".pst" files, etc.

If anyone has any suggestions for a better way to accomplish the shared
distribution lists I would appreciate them. Also, any explanation of
why it is necessary to create and then edit that profile for the above
method would also be appreciated.

Thanks.
Bill