Public Folder and other mailbox Contacts folders in the Outlook
Address Book
For users who connect to Microsoft Exchange server, maintaining a
contacts folder in the Public Folders
hierarchy is one way to benefit from a group address book that
individual users can contribute to. With some extra effort (see
below), the Outlook Address Book can also
display contacts from another user's mailbox, making it easy for an
assistant to use the boss' contacts to address messages.
The
process of adding another user's Contacts folder to your own address
book display is somewhat involved:
Create a new Outlook profile that connects directly with the other
user's mailbox, not your own, then start Outlook with this profile.
If you receive a prompt that Outlook cannot open the folders, you may need to ask the Exchange administrator
to grant your Windows user account full access to the
other user's mailbox temporarily so that you can complete these
steps.
Right-click the other user's Contacts folder,
choose Properties, then switch to the Outlook Address Book
tab. Make sure that the Show this folder as an e-mail Address
Book box is checked. Under Name of the address book,
change the displayname from Contacts (the default) to a name that
will distinguish this address list, such as Joe's Contacts if you're
in Joe's mailbox.
Close Outlook.
In Control Panel | Mail, bring up the properties for the profile
that you created in Step 1. In the Microsoft Exchange Server
service, change the main mailbox from the other user's to your own. On the
Advanced tab of
the Exchange Server service, add the other user's mailbox as a
secondary mailbox.
Restart Outlook, using the same profile as in Steps 1 and 4.
After you restart Outlook, when you display the address book, you should see Joe's Contacts
listed in the Outlook Address Book along with your own Contacts folder.
Notes
Any contacts folder that you see in the Outlook Address Book can be
used as the data source for a merge with Word. However, in some
versions of Outlook, you will receive an error if you start a merge
with a contacts folder in Public Folders from within Word. The
workaround is to start the merge in Outlook instead, displaying the
source contacts folder, then choosing Tools | Mail Merge.