Category problem

[tjbutter3]

When a contact is assigned to multiple categories, each category is separated
by a comma and no space. Hence, when I try to sort by name, Outlook treats
each category by one long name instead of the individual category names. If I
select a contact and fix the problem by manually inserting a space between
each category name it will sort fine. However I have over 1500 contacts and
that would be very time consuming. Has anybody experienced the same problem
and/or have any suggestions for a fix? Thanks.

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

When I place a Contact in more than one Category, mine have a comma, then a
space, then the next Category.

What version? What exact method did you use to Categorise them?

You can't sort by Category so what are you actually trying to do?

 

[tjbutter3]

I know that is the the way they are supposed to look and if I place a new
contact into multiple categories then they have the comma followed by a space
then the next category.

However all my existing contacts have the Category name, then a comma
followed by the next category name without a space in between. I believe
because of this Outlook is recognizing the entire category list as one
category. For example, one of my contacts looks like this
Business,Personal,VIP. So when I attempt to sort by category Outlook does not
distinguish between the 3 categories, but instead lists the entire list as a
single category.

I am using Outlook 2003 with SP2.

As a side note, I exported my contact list to Excel and noticed that in the
categories column all the categories were separated by a comma except for the
contacts I had corrected manually. They were separated by a semicolon.

 

[Brian Tillman]

When a contact is assigned to multiple categories, each category is
separated by a comma and no space. Hence, when I try to sort by name,
Outlook treats each category by one long name instead of the
individual category names. If I select a contact and fix the problem
by manually inserting a space between each category name it will sort
fine. However I have over 1500 contacts and that would be very time
consuming. Has anybody experienced the same problem and/or have any
suggestions for a fix? Thanks.

When I tried to duplicate the problem by deliberately entering the multiple
categories separated by commas and no spaces, Outlook added the space
automatically for me. There have been several reports such as yours and I,
for one, have not been able to duplicate it issue.

 

[tjbutter3]

UPDATE

I have narrowed the problem down to Blackberry's. This issue only appears
on PC's where Outlook is synced with a blackberry. During the sync a flag is
thrown about categories. All the users didn't pay attention to it and just
accepted it. Apparently the blackberry doesn't know how to handle categories
and during a sync operation it strips the spaces away from the categories and
leaves the categories separated by only a comma. This in turn updates Outlook
and leaves it in a "broken" state. I am going to follow up with Blackberry.
Thanks for the help.