Am I going crazy? Am I utterly stupid? Am I blind? OutlookAddressbook empty

[Henro]

I am really going crazy. I have Outlook 2007 installed. We are using
Microsoft SBS 2003. Business Contact Manager is installed, out of the
box; with a local database SQL Express 2005.

When using CTRL+SHFT+B I see the following lists in Outlook 2007

Outlook address book
- Accounts (probably made by Business
Contact Manager, empty)
- Contacts (personal contacts added
through responding to email and synced from phone)
- MyCompany Contacts (Public Folder containing all
emailadress of all people in our domain)
- Business Contacts (probably made by Business
Contact Manager, empty)

Algemene adreslijst (dutch, generic addresslist,
seems to contain all the domainusers)

All address lists (empty)
- All Contacts (contains the
domainmembers with an external emailaddress)
- All Groups (contains apparantly a
group with all domainmembers)
- All Users (again, all the names
from domain)
- Public Folders (empty)



From what I read left and right the Outlook Addressbook should contain
all the items from all the contactlists.
But it is showing empty, telling me that no items can be found.

When synchronising my phones (Nokia 6320 and N95) only the contacts in
'Outlook Address book - Contacts' are shown. Others are deleted from
the phones.
When selecting 'Contacts' on the left side I only see 'Outlook Address
book - Contacts'

This situation should change. What I would like to see is:

1) one big list consisting of:
- all my personal (local) contacts
- all users in the domain (centralised list)
- all contacts in Business Contact Manager (centralised
list)
2) This big list is what I want to see when choosing 'Contacts' on the
left side.
3) Whatever I see when choosing 'Contacts' on the left side is what I
want to be synchronised with either my PDa or one of my Nokia phones

But nowhere I can find instructions on how to meet these requirements
(not even one of them!)
Is what I want impossible to do? Everywhere I look BCM is said to be
able to communicate with an Exchange server or a centralised SQL
server.

Can anyone give me advise on how to tackle this problem? Thanks a lot
for shedding some light in my infinite darkness!

Henro

 

[Diane Poremsky]

1. you'll never see all of the items in one big list. each contact list will
be its own list in the address book too.
2. the pda can only sync with the folders its sync software support. in most
cases, this is the outlook contacts folder.

I'm not sure I follow your post, but the if the address book is empty, the
following is the usual cause. Note that if you use Outlook 2007 and the show
as address book option is grayed out that you need to make a new profile.
If you have Contacts in the Contacts folder but they are not accessible when
you click on the To button, check these settings:

Make sure the Contact folder is enabled as an email address book. Right
click the Contacts folder, choose Properties then Outlook Address Book. Is
the box to enable as email address book is checked?

If this is grayed out...

Go to Tools | Email Accounts, choose View or change existing directories or
address book. Is the Outlook Address Book present? If it isn't listed, add
it and close and restart Outlook. If it is listed, then remove it and close
then restart Outlook and repeat these steps to add it.