Duplicate address book entries for a single contact

[keithBrownOfPluralsight]

I'm trying to figure out the relationship between contacts and the
address book. FWIW, I only have a single contacts folder in my address
book - the one in my PST file.

But for a given entry in my contact folder, I sometimes see two entries
in the address book. Say John Doe happens to have a fax number - he
shows up twice in the address book:

John Doe ([email protected])
John Doe (Business Fax)

The address book seems to be treating fax numbers as first class
citizens - fine. But this really is annoying when I send mail to John
Doe and I'm told that Outlook can't figure out what email address to
use because there's two entries for John in the address book (although
they map to the same contact).

Is anyone else annoyed by this behavior? And better yet, have you found
a workaround?

To clarify, I want to be able to hit Ctrl-N to get a new mail message,
type in John Doe, and send the message without having Outlook complain
that there's multiple John Doe's in the address book. And I'm hoping I
don't have to erase all my stored fax numbers in order to do this

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Outlook considers fax numbers to be valid electronic addresses, since there
are many client- and server-based components that can use such addresses.

One method to hide fax numbers from the address book is to prefix the fax
number with one or more letters (maybe B for business fax, H for home, O for
other). If the fax number begins with a letter, Outlook won't show it in the
address book.

There are a couple of utilities that can help you hide fax numbers from the
address book. See:
http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/rshifa.htm
http://www.sperrysoftware.com/Outlook_Solutions.htm (Hide Fax Numbers)
http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/toolbox/

Another way to avoid having fax numbers appear in the address book is
simply not to enter data in the fax fields. Put fax numbers in some other
(non-phone) fields.