Entourage-created Public Folder contacts in Outlook address book

[Michael Rose]

Hi all,

Here's a fun one. In an Exchange 2003/Entourage 2004 11.2.5/Outlook
2003 environment, make a public folder for contacts on the Exchange
server. Create some contacts, in Entourage, in the public folder. View
the public folder in Outlook -- should look perfectly normal. Now, open
properties for the public folder in Outlook and check "Show this folder
as an e-mail Address Book" in the Outlook Address Book tab.

Click the Outlook e-mail address book icon and select your public
folder as your search source. Notice anything funny? None of these
people have NAMES! Just e-mail addresses; there's nothing in the Name
or Full Name fields. Wha? The data is there, it shows fine in Contacts
view -- but the address book viewer (which is, unfortunately, what many
Outlook users go to when browsing for recipients to an e-mail) doesn't
show the names. They also don't autocomplete correctly from the address
fields in an e-mail. This state is preserved even if the contacts are
copied from the public folder to a user-specific address book.

It's possible to work around this by exporting/importing the contacts
in Outlook (less than ideal for a public folder) or making a minor
change to the contact name (adding a space at the end automatically
truncates back, so that's one step).

Any suggestions for Entourage data entry best practices that can
squelch this?

thanks,
--Mike

 

[pendolino]

Mike- i've got the same problem as a user and its bugging me when i go
to send emails in outlook and find blank names. have to check in the
address book for the name and then dig up the email, etc.

i have our support looking at it but they seem to be stumped. please
email me if you get any answers.

thanks
hamad