An address book full of names, lots of email addresses, countless contacts. The flood of information on daily management of electronic correspondence is overwhelming. E-Mail addresses, names, data are stored in our address books and there more or less forgotten.

 

That an active contact management can be very helpful for Outlook users when handling electronic mail will be the central theme in this blog.

 

 

Create Contacts and manage them optimal

 

An address book is relatively useless if addresses are only inserted infrequently or not at all. E-Mail addresses from received messages can be copied and pasted in an address book easily. Therefore you set the mouse in the header of a received email and press the right mouse button. Then you select “Add to the contacts”.

 

 

Add Contacts

 

New contacts can also be added manually via New / Add Contact.
Fill in all relevant fields. Fields which are not important to you can also be left blank. At least name and email address should however be entered. End with “Save and Close”.

 

 

Link contact with a category

 

To link a contact with a category you open the contact. Right below in the contact form a category can be chosen. Place a check mark in the option box before the category you want to assign the contact to. A contact can be associated with more than one category.
Close the dialog with OK.

 

 

Sort Outlook address book by last name

 

The Outlook address book is usually sorted by first name. This collation is of course not desirable when searching for business contacts.
To change this collation you switch to workgroup mode and then you select Extras\Services\Outlook address book. Now you can set how Outlook should sort the addresses.

 

Most users apply the Internet mode. In this mode, the settings for the address book are made as follows:

 

1. Open Outlook contacts via Extra\Address book

 

2. From the menu bar of the address book you choose View\Sorting

 

3. Select the options name, last name and ascending

 

 

Linking contacts with a photo

 

Since Outlook 2003 it is possible to assign a picture in each contact. (For earlier Outlook versions the contact form must be changed.) To place the picture you position the cursor on the field for the image and choose from the menu Insert\Object\ Insert file, then you “browse” your hard disc and then select and upload the appropriate picture for the contact.

 

 

Delete duplicate contacts

 

If you accidentally entered or inserted a contact line under the same name several times, the duplicate can quickly be deleted.

 

- Choose Extra\Options
There you click on the button “contact options” and then choose “check for duplicates”.

 

- Outlook now checks, when a contact is created, whether a further contact with the same name already exists in the address book.

 

- If Outlook detects two identical entries there are two alternatives to handle this problem. The first way is to replace the existing contact with the new one. The second alternative is to insert the new contact, and update the existing contact with the new data.

 

- If you decide to update the contact with new data, Outlook compares the two contact forms and extends the contact information with the new input

 

 

Backup contacts

 

To create a backup copy of your contact folder, you process as follows:

 

1. You dial File\Import – export

 

2. When the Import/Export wizard starts you select “Export file” and then click “Next”.

 

3. In the list “create file type” the entry personal folders file (*..pst) is located. With “Next” you reach the following dialog.

 

4. Now mark the folder “Contacts”. If sub folders where created for that folder, switch to the option “Include Sub folders” then click “Next”.

 

5. Via “browse” you choose the folder in which to place the backup. You can also enter the path directly in the dialog box. The data backup is saved by default under “C:\Documents and Settings\other\Local Settings\ Application Data \Microsoft\Outlook\backup.pst”. If you want to adjust the file name, make sure that the file extension remains unchanged!
End the dialog with “Finish”.

 

6. The dialog “Create Personal Folders” appears now. There you enter the name of the backup copy. The backup copy can also be protected with a password.

 

7. Close the dialog and create the backup copy with “OK”.

 

 

Logbook for all contact activities

 

If you are looking for messages from specific contacts the so-called “Logbook” can be very helpful. With one click on the tab “Activities” in the contact form of the contact whose E-Mail you are looking for, Outlook searches for all mail, as well as appointments and tasks which are related to this contact.

 

Depending on the scope of communication, this process may take a while, because Outlook lists every activity relating to this contact.

 

 

For all questions about Data synchronization visit our homepage.