Imported OAB Contacts - Missing Free/Busy Information, No Name Expansion/Resolution

[owenkun]

Hello, all.

I have a user that was recently given a new workstation and a
corresponding copy of Outlook 2003. Predictably, the user's contacts
weren't displayed within the address selection dialog until the
Outlook Address Book service was added via Tools->Email Accounts.

Several of the user's personal contacts also appear within our site's
GAL. Whenever the user creates a meeting request and then selects a
contact within their personal contacts they find that their name does
not resolve (it retains its (e-mail address removed) format rather than
becoming lastname, firstname as it generally does) and their free/busy
information is not available.

As a troubleshooting step we've removed the individual from the
meeting then re-added the same person from the GAL. In this case, the
name resolves and the free/busy information is viewable. Additionally,
we've deleted a few contacts from the local contacts list and then re-
added them from the GAL in an attempt to see if this resolves the
issue.

It does.

While this serves as a usable workaround for the time-being, I'm
interested in knowing the following:

a) What caused this to happen?

and

b) Is there any way to update the user's contact list such that it
will resolve the name and show free/busy information, so as to prevent
the user from having to re-create their entire contact list?

I've done searches within the app, Groups and Google proper, but to no
avail.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

-owen

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Tools | Address Book, Tools | OPtions: Changing the address resolution order to resolve to the GAL first may solve the problem, given the symptoms.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers