FAQs of Life

One of the features that I get a lot of questions is about the Outlook 2003 (and 2007) auto complete function and it’s relation, or lack there of, to Outlook Contacts. Anyone that has used Outlook for any length of time knows what I’m talking about; when you open a new email and start typing an address and you get a list of addresses to pick from. If an address does not AutoComplete, it will be added to the list and show up the next time you start typing that address. This is a terrific function and the majority of Outlook users - myself included - continually use this feature.

Outlook Contacts are used to store email addresses, multiple phone numbers and mailing address, and just about any other piece of info that you could associate with a person or company. Once you have an email address listed for a contact, you can easily use your “Address Book” to pick users and send messages without retyping their address. There is no link between email addresses that exist as Contacts or email addresses that are stored in your AutoComplete list. If you update an email address for a person in your Contacts, there is a very high probability that the old address exists in the AutoComplete list, making it far too easy to send a message to an old address even after you’ve updated it in your contacts.

So what’s the problem with AutoComplete (also called Nickname file)? There are three specific problems that I’ve encountered with this feature.

1. The AutoComplete information is kept in a file, separate from the rest of your Outlook information. It’s difficult to transfer the AutoComplete list to a new computer
2. If you’re not careful, you can easily send a message to the wrong person
3. Removing entries from the list is not intuitive.

The first issue is the biggest problem - the AutoComplete file is not kept in the same place as your Outlook information. If you work in a company and have a dedicated email server, any information you have stored in Outlook is most likely backed-up on a regular basis. Except for the AutoComplete file. This file isn’t stored on your company’s email server but in your user profile on your local computer. In Windows XP, this file is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\profilename.NK2. (Replace username with your username and profile name with the Outlook profile display name, this is often just “Outlook”). And if you use Outlook with a local PST file, hopefully you’re backing up your PST file. (If you’re not take a look at Mozy online backup). But the .NK2 file is stored in a completely different location than the PST file.

Since this file is not stored with the rest of your Outlook data, not only do you have to be diligent in backing the file up, you also have to manually move it if you get a new computer, regardless if you are using an email server or use a PST file. The basic procedure for moving the AutoComplete is copy the file from C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\profilename.NK2 and put it into the same location on the new computer. If the Outlook profile name is different on the new computer, rename the NK2 file to match.

The second issue is that while very convenient, the AutoComplete feature makes it VERY easy to misaddress emails. If you don’t pay attention, it’s very easy to send the salary reports to Steve the assistant rather than Steven the CFO. Just last night one of my clients sent me an email intended for someone else because she didn’t check the address that the AutoComplete filled in.
Building on the second problem, there are very limited options if you want to edit the AutoComplete file. There’s no built in way to edit an entry and deleting entries isn’t clear either. Here’s the steps for deleting a AutoComplete address

1. Open a new email message
2. In the To field, type the first letter of the address you want to delete which will bring up all the AutoComplete entries under that letter
3. Using the Arrow Keys - very important to use the Arrow Keys on the Keyboard and not the mouse - arrow down to the entry that you want to delete
4. When you have the desired entry selected, press the Delete Key

If you want a tool to manage/edit the AutoComplete list, I recommend checking out NK2View.