5 Questions/Problems encountered with Outlook XP - can anyone help please?

[Manic Poster]

Background
Running Windows XP and Office XP - Outlook 2002 (10.4219.4219) SP-2
Word version is Word 2002 (10.4219.4219) SP-2. Have Exchange Server.

Have set up a mailbox to which a number of users have access (as a service).
It contains a number of folders, including a Contacts folder and an Inbox.
I'm not sure why they haven't used public folders on the server for this.
(Does anyone know why you would choose to set these up under a mailbox
rather than as shared public folders?)

1. There appears to be a discrepancy between the number of records in the
Contacts folder, and the number of records that can be seen.

Question 1. Is there any way to see all private records in a shared Outlook
Contacts folder, so that the Private flag can be changed to public?

When the contacts folder is selected, the status bar indicates that there
are 1489 records in the folder, however, if all records are selected (Ctrl +
A) and copied to Excel, there are only 1396 records. I am guessing that
this may be caused by some records being flagged as private. To prove this,
we need to find the private records. No one knows who might have created
the private records - it may even have been done by users who are no longer
at the company, and whose profiles have been deleted.

Question 2. Is there a problem (other than the private flag) that could
cause the number of records shown in the status bar to be different to the
number of records actually in a folder?

To test the problem about numbers of records, we tried copying certain
contact records to temporary folders, and copying to Excel. Using the By
Category view, all records in the 'xxx' category were selected and copied to
a test contacts folder. The status bar said there were 374 records in the
folder - when copied to Excel - it also counted 374. A filter was applied
to show all records where the category field did NOT contain 'XXX'. (Note
that the 'xxx' is a unique text string for categories). These records were
copied to a test folder. The status bar indicated that the number of
records was 1020. 1020 plus 374 = 1394 records (and we think there are
actually 1396 records in total). When copied to Excel, there were 1022
records - the number we actually expected. So why does the status bar tell
us there are 2 less records than there actually are?

Question 3. Is there a reliable way to include the Country field in a Word
mail merge? And why does the country field sometimes not show in the
address area of an open record?

There appears to be something odd about the country field in contact
records. If the country/region is added to the record by typing in the
address box, it shows in that address box when the record is open, and is
included in the mail merge correctly (when using the Business Address field
for the merge, and setting the appropriate value to always include
country/region when setting up the merge.) However, if the country field is
added to the contact by clicking on the Address button and entering the data
in the appropriate field, then the country does not display in the address
area when the record is open, and is not included in the merge. (We tried
including the country field as well as the business address field in the
merge - this did put the country field in for records that had the country
field not showing, but put it in twice for the records that had the country
field showing - so this could not be used to fix the problem.)

Question 4. Can you set up a global Master Category list so that all users
can see and use the same list on a shared folder?

I seem to remember reading that it is possible to set up a global Master
Category list for all users to use on a shared folder. This would mean that
if a user reset to default, it would show the global Master Category list
for that folder. How is it set up? Does this only apply to Exchange Server
public folders? (At the moment, if one user adds a category to the master
list for a contacts folder, it cannot be seen or used by other users. If
data is added by the person who set up the category, other users see it in
the category list with (not in master category list) next to it.

Question 5. There is a contacts folder, set up under a mailbox that many
users can access. Users want to be able to use the contacts folder as an
e-mail address book, but have been told that this cannot be done. Can it?
How? If not, can it be done for a public (exchange server) folder, and if
so how?

Can anyone assist with the above please or suggest another place to seek
help.

TIA

Manic

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

FYI, you'll probably get faster responses when you post one question at a time. Someone who can answer one might not respond to this message if they didn't know the answers to your other 4.

1) Normally, only the mailbox owner can see all the items, including those marked private.

2) Not that I can think of.

3) Whether the country displays in the contact record may depend, I think, on what the chosen country is.

4) Not easily. See http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/olcat.htm

5) For public folders, it's easy. Just use the Properties dialog to make the folder part of the Outlook Address Book. The process of adding another user's Contacts folder to your own address book display is rather more involved:

1. Start with a profile that logs directly onto the other user's mailbox, not your own.

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* to change the mailbox from the other user's to your own. On the Advanced tab of the Exchange Server service, add the other user's mailbox as a secondary mailbox.

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

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers