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MS Office Forum / Outlook / Contacts / January 2004Outlook contacts dissappeared
Having had to do a multiple restore for XP for the umpteenth time. The last time all the contacts in my Outlook 2000 disappeared. I tried re-importing, reinstalling all to no avail. I right-clicked the contacts in Outlook bar and the Outlook Address Book tabl where it says show this folder as an email address book is greyed out and cannot be checked. Any ideas, cause otherwise I've lost 3 years of contacts and I'm going back to W98. If you would like to post an accurate description of what you did and why, we could try to troubleshoot. What you've posted is simply a rambling rant that provides no clues. It also appears that your issues are more with the operating system than with Outlook.  SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > Having had to do a multiple restore for XP for the > umpteenth time. The last time all the contacts in my [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > otherwise I've lost 3 years of contacts and I'm going back > to W98. Sorry for the rant but I'm frustrated since I read every post in outlook about contacts disappearing before I posted. All I did was go to restore using system restore to a good point. Then reinstalled office. Opened Outlook and all came in except contacts and address book. Contacts is blank and Outlook Address Book tab in properties is greyed out. If I open Address Book under tools there is a little contacts icon in the left window where the names should be. The only error message I get is that i should run the inbox repair tool and I cannot locate that because i have XP on a partition (OEM) and no disks. If I open Address Book, under tools>accounts there is nothing in the Internet Accounts>Directory Service. I do not have my internet connected to avoid new emails while I resolve this and to avoid getting anything else I don't want. I tried to import but there appear to be no .iaf files even after a search. I am using my laptop to post. But what made you run system restore and then reinstall Office? That's a pretty draconian solution for most problems. Rather hard to recover anything after that. Have you searched for all your PST files and opened each until you found your Contacts data? Why can't you add the Outlook Address Book? Why can't you locate the Inbox Repair Tool? SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > Sorry for the rant but I'm frustrated since I read every post in outlook about contacts disappearing before I posted. All I did was go to restore using system restore to a good point. Then reinstalled office. Opened Outlook and all came in except contacts and address book. Contacts is blank and Outlook Address Book tab in properties is greyed out. If I open Address Book under tools there is a little contacts icon in the left window where the names should be. The only error message I get is that i should run the inbox repair tool and I cannot locate that because i have XP on a partition (OEM) and no disks. If I open Address Book, under tools>accounts there is nothing in the Internet Accounts>Directory Service. I do not have my internet connected to avoid new emails while I resolve this and to avoid getting anything else I don't want. I tried to import but there appear to be no .iaf files even after a search. I am using my laptop to post. Oh yeah. Half my calendar entries disappeared. Anything that was a recurring stayed. Single items disappeared. I even tried importing my backup .pst since I always back up important files. Same problem. If I import the same file into one of my laptops not running XP, no problems encountered. If it's an XP problem, I'll go to that group, but I don't know which problem it is. Despite having downloaded all patches, running ICF, running Norton AV and Qwikfix, I had a virus. Used system restore to go back to a basic restore point where everything worked. I did undo system restore before doing that so as not to bring the worm (GAOBOT) with me. Restored system restore. However, the restore point was before I had loaded in Office. I did try every .pst file listed (did a search in WE). None worked. I then went to my back up files to restore those. I get everything but the Address book. I did follow all the posts in the XP group to get rid of the virus. Now everything is back but contacts Address Book. It won't even accept new contacts. I've rerun virus scan just to ensure I don't have something else...worm, trojan, virus, spyware. I'm at a loss. There is no address book. The address book is just a view of your Contacts. If you have you Contacts, you have all your data. Just reconfigure your Outlook Address Book. It is not unusual for the Outlook Address Book to "lose track" of the connection to its Contacts Folder when you move or import your PST or update your Outlook version or OS. Use the following steps to reset the connection, depending on your Outlook version. Note that in some instances you may actually have to remove the Outlook Address Book completely from your Profile, close Outlook, and then re-add it before you can get it to work. Outlook 2000, Corp/Workgroup: Go to Tools > Services. Make sure the Outlook Address Book service is listed. If not, add it. Next, R click on the Contact folder or folders you want the OAB to display, choose "Properties", go to the Outlook Address Book tab and check the "Show this folder as an E-mail address book" box. You may also need to go to Tools > Options > Addressing Tab and choose to show your Contacts folder. Outlook 2002: Go to Tools | E-mail accounts, select "View or change existing directories or address books", and click OK. If you don't see the OAB in the Directories and Address Books list, click the Back button, then select "Add a new directory or address book", then "Additional Address Books", and add the OAB. Then keep clicking Back until you get back to the first dialog box, and go back to the Directories and Address Books list as you did earlier. Once the OAB appears in the list, select it and then click Change to make sure the Contacts folder(s) you want to display are listed. If any of them aren't listed, you'll need to enable those Contacts folders as Outlook Address Books by right clicking the folder, selecting Properties, clicking the Outlook Address Book tab, and checking the "Show this folder as an E-mail address book" box. Make sure you restart Outlook after making these changes. SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > Despite having downloaded all patches, running ICF, running Norton AV and Qwikfix, I had a virus. Used system restore to go back to a basic restore point where everything worked. I did undo system restore before doing that so as not to bring the worm (GAOBOT) with me. Restored system restore. However, the restore point was before I had loaded in Office. I did try every .pst file listed (did a search in WE). None worked. I then went to my back up files to restore those. I get everything but the Address book. I did follow all the posts in the XP group to get rid of the virus. Now everything is back but contacts Address Book. It won't even accept new contacts. I've rerun virus scan just to ensure I don't have something else...worm, trojan, virus, spyware. I'm at a loss. I apologize if you see my post in another place. The cursor was not where I thought it was. I have Outlook under email only, so I do not have a services tab. If I go to Tools>Options> Preferences>Email>email options, even the put contacts in this folder is greyed out. If I right click on Contacts go to Properties>OAB> Show this folder... it's greyed out. By the way, where's the Inbox Repair Tool. I have an OEM XP system so no disks Thanks. IMO mode has the Outlook Address Book enabled by default. You can't disable it. The box is greyed out, but I bet it's checked, isn't it? You should have mentioned you were using IMO. It's a completely different program. You cannot repair the Address Book in IMO. SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > I apologize if you see my post in another place. The cursor was not where I thought it was. I have Outlook under email only, so I do not have a services tab. If I go to Tools>Options> Preferences>Email>email options, even the put contacts in this folder is greyed out. If I right click on Contacts go to Properties>OAB> Show this folder... it's greyed out. > By the way, where's the Inbox Repair Tool. I have an OEM XP system so no disks. > > Thanks. Thanks for getting back to me. If I can't repair it and I've lost all those contacts is there something I did or didn't do that caused this problem? I'd like to know so I can prevent this from happening again. I ask because I have another PC in my office that I need to upgrade, well, was planning to upgrade to XP which would mean installing Outlook and having it open the PST file. If this person loses all his contacts, he'll kill me. There is no way you could lose Contacts through the Outlook Address Book configuration. No data is ever stored in the Outlook Address Book. All data resides in the Contacts Folder and always has. The only way you can lose Contacts data from a PST file is to reformat your hard drive or do something that would thoroughly corrupt your PST file, like rename it or overwrite it. SignatureRuss Valentine [MVP-Outlook] > Thanks for getting back to me. If I can't repair it and I've lost all those contacts is there something I did or didn't do that caused this problem? I'd like to know so I can prevent this from happening again. I ask because I have another PC in my office that I need to upgrade, well, was planning to upgrade to XP which would mean installing Outlook and having it open the PST file. If this person loses all his contacts, he'll kill me. |
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