"Phantom" Contacts in Outlook 2003

[Ray Elias]

I'm stymied.

If I do a search, Outlook finds contacts that are not listed in my Contacts"
folder. These are very old contacts that I thought had been deleted a VERY
long time ago. When I pull up "properties" on any of them, it shows that
they are in the "contacts" folder, but they are not listed there anywhere.

I actually changed the name of one to "~", just to see if I could find it.
Nothing. However, I still could search on it and it would pull it up.

I even did an "Advanced Search" on my hard drive to see if I could find
where these people are filed. Advanced Search found nothing. (yes, I did
have on look in system and hidden folders).

I thought, maybe it was pulling from the Windows address boook, but that
shows as empty.

Where are these coming from and how do I get rid of them? THe big pain in
the butt is, for the "current" contacts, there are showing as 2 listings.
Only 1 shows up in Contacts, but if you search on a name, it will come up
twice, both listed as Smith, Mary (Contacts). If you open one and change the
name to Smith~, Mary, it only changes one of them, so they're not the same
contact. But only the one will be listed in contacts.

Same thing happens when I type in someone's name to e-mail them. Both
"contacts" will come up. If I try and keep track (archive) of
correspondance, I can't do it, because I don't know which one it will save to!

Does this make any sense? Can I find where these "Phantom" contacts are
coming from and get rid of them?

Thanks VERY much for any suggestions!

 

[Vince Averello [MVP-Outlook]]

It's a long shot but could it be in the Deleted Items folder?

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Use Folder List view to examine your entire Folder hierarchy.
You'll find them somewhere.

 

[Ray Elias]

Thanks for your quick responses.

I was able to find the fix to this (Russ actually answered this on another
thread). It was difficult to describe the situation, so it took a while to
locate what I was looking for.

In the event that it may help someone else, here's Russ' response that
worked for me...
That would depend on your Outlook version, which you did not post.
For the current version, remove the orphans here:
Tools > E-mail accounts > View or change existing directories or address
books > Outlook Address Book > Change. >
[/QUOTE][/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

That would work, but only by removing the reference to this Contacts Folder
from the Outlook Address Book. This Contacts folder must still exist in your
Outlook profile somewhere.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Thanks for your quick responses.

I was able to find the fix to this (Russ actually answered this on another
thread). It was difficult to describe the situation, so it took a while
to
locate what I was looking for.

In the event that it may help someone else, here's Russ' response that
worked for me...

That would depend on your Outlook version, which you did not post.
For the current version, remove the orphans here:
Tools > E-mail accounts > View or change existing directories or address
books > Outlook Address Book > Change. >

[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]

 

[Brian Tillman]

Same thing happens when I type in someone's name to e-mail them. Both
"contacts" will come up.

Where do they "come up"? As you type one in the To field, or when you click
To and view the address book?