Chapter 7: Contacts in Outlook

A person either inside your organization or outside of your organization could be considered a contact. Contacts in Outlook is a repository where you can store information about the people you want to contact. This information could be mailing addresses, email IDs, names, personal notes, or even an entire email message with information that you want to associate with that contact.

Where do you want to store your contact information? Within your computer, on the cloud, or on your phone or tablet? You need to know this to decide how you want to store your addresses with the Outlooks Contacts feature, otherwise known as Outlook People. We will discuss how to efficiently add new contacts or create a contact group, as well as where to find contacts if your corporation uses Exchange or simply keeping the list in your address book. We will also show you how to manage your contacts and view them in multiple ways.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following topics:

• Adding new contacts
• Contact groups (distribution lists)
• Views
• Viewing a contact’s address on a map

Adding new contacts

Most of us have a pile of business cards that we got at some convention, or various other places, that we need to get into our contacts in Outlook. Outlook is a great place to manage all those cards. It can be a time-consuming endeavor uploading all of them, but the payoffs could be large. There are several apps that you can get on your phone that will allow you to snap a picture of a card and sync that picture with an Outlook contact. If you receive a lot of business cards, you may want to consider using one of these apps. In Outlook, to enter contact information, click People | New Contact and enter the information that is available.

Adding a contact from an email message

Let us understand how to add a contact from an email message:

1. Open the message so that the person’s email ID is shown.
2. Right-click the email ID that you want to create a contact out of and click Add to Outlook Contacts.

Figure 7.1 – Right-click menu for adding a contact from an email

3. In the add new contact window, enter the details for your contact.

Figure 7.2 – Adding a new contact entry

4. Click the Save & Close button on the Contact tab in the ribbon when the entry is complete.

I have found that this is the quickest way to insert a contact, especially if you do not have all the details for them. This is quick and can easily be done within seconds once the email message has been opened.

Business cards

20 years ago, I never imagined that I would be giving my business card out electronically instead of a paper business card. You can create a business card in Outlook to send through your emails so that the recipients have your contact information just as they would if you handed them a physical business card, and it includes the same information if not more.

Default business cards

An electronic business card is created when you add a new contact in Outlook. An electronic business card is also created in the background for each contact. Outlook gives us different views to display contacts in the workspace. To view your contacts as business cards, open the People or Contacts workspace and click Home | Business Card.

Figure 7.3 – Business card view

Only the fields that you populate with data will be displayed within the business card view or any other view. Each business card will include the contact’s name, picture, phone numbers, email ID, company name, job title, and more, and you can edit this information to your own liking. If a field is left blank, it will not appear on the business card. I would recommend that you do not overdo adding fields to the business card. Think of adding content as you would on a real business card with just the necessary information to show on the card. Otherwise, the card will have too much information to view nicely on the card. If you need to make changes to a business card, you can edit it, as we will show next.

Editing a business card

To edit a business card, first open the business card by double-clicking on the preferred card in the workspace. This will show all the details pertaining to the selected contact.

All you need to do is click Contact | Business Card. The Edit Business Card dialog box will open, showing several options available for you to choose from for editing the business card.

Figure 7.4 – Editing a business card

Now, let us understand the components shown in Figure 7.4:

1. This is a preview of how the business card looks if sent to another recipient.
2. The Fields section is used to add or remove fields to or from the card. The items you see in this box are going to show on the card if the fields have data in them to display. When you highlight one of these fields, you can click Remove to remove the field from this list. Click the Add... button to see a list of available fields that you can add to the card.

Figure 7.5 – Adding fields to a business card

3. Below the Fields list are buttons to arrange the fields how you would like them to show on the business card. Select the field you want to re-order and then click the up or down arrows to place it where desired within the Fields list.
4. The Card Design area of the Edit Business Card dialog box has the controls for adjusting the layout of the card. You can change the layout position of the image as well as the background color that you want to be applied to the card.

Click on the Change... button to select a picture to display on the card if you desire.

5. In the center of the right section of the dialog box are the Edit options for the fields that are listed on the left. When you select a field on the left, you can use these controls to adjust the font, text, label, and colors for the selected field.
6. The Reset Card button allows you to reset the card back to the default settings. Use this if you have made changes to any items in this dialog box to reset all adjustments with just one click. It’s a quick way to go back to the start and redesign a new look or branding.

You can set up several business cards if you prefer and select the card you want to attach to an email. You must right-click on the desired card and then click Forward Contact | As a Business Card. The business card will be included as an attachment in the new message that is created.

Figure 7.6 – Forwarding a business card

These steps only apply to a single business contact, as shown. The As a Business Card option will be grayed out if the business card is a contact group, which will be discussed in the next section.

Contact groups

Do you find yourself emailing a group of people all the time? Doing these repetitive tasks over and over again can really take up a lot of your time. Outlook’s contact groups will free up a lot of your time once you get the groups set up and you will find this setup very easy. By setting up an Outlook contact group, instead of selecting multiple contact names you want to include in an email you are composing, you can select a single contact group instead. To create a contact group, take the following steps:

1. From the People button on the navigation pane, click Home | New Contact Group.

Figure 7.7 – New Contact Group

2. In the New Contact Group window, enter a name for the new group.
3. Click Contact Group | Add Members. Select where you are getting the members from by selecting one of the three choices: From Outlook Contacts, From Address Book, or New E-mail Contact.

Figure 7.8 – Add Members

4. You can select these names one by one; to select a group of contacts, you can hold down the Ctrl key and select each name individually, or if the names are all together, you can click the first name and press and hold the Shift key and select the last name, and the entire group will be selected. When the names are selected, click on the Members button to populate the members into the Members field. If you double-click on one of the names, it will populate in the Members field as well.

Figure 7.9 – Selecting member contacts

As members are selected from the various methods, the contact will be added to the Contact Group window after clicking OK. You will see the names appear in the Members box, as shown previously.

Figure 7.10 – Contact Group

5. Click Contact Group | Save & Close to save the new contact group. Your new contact group will now show as a separate item in the People workspace in all views.

Figure 7.11 – People workspace, business card view

When in the business card view, the business card for a contact group will not have a picture field. It has a generic picture and shows the name of the contact group and the text Group. You cannot edit the information shown on the card as you can with individual contacts.

Note

Don’t confuse a contact group as described in this chapter with a group inside of Outlook. A group is a collection of people put together to work on a common project or event. To set up a group, click Home | New Group in the People workspace. This feature is described in Chapter 13,Collaboration and Integration within Outlook.

Update Now

Contact groups, also known as distribution lists, do not automatically update as changes are made to your address book. By using the Update Now feature, Outlook will scan through the members of the group and update all necessary contact information for you. Click Contact Group | Update Now.

Figure 7.12 – Update Now

This action will synchronize the details of the distribution list members with the information stored about them in the address book. In the following figure, an error appears because one of the contacts in the group had been deleted previously:

Figure 7.13 – Update, contact not found

As employees come and go within jobs, I have found that having Outlook synchronize my groups has helped me eliminate the bounced-back messages that I would get if an email ID was no longer active.

Managing contact group members

You can manage contact groups by updating the members as they come and go. I’ve not worked with a group yet where I did not have to remove a member or add a member over time:

1. To manage a contact group, you first have to open the People workspace in any view that you prefer.
2. Double-click on the contact group that you want to manage or view. You could also select the group and hit Enter on the keyboard.
3. Click Contact Group | Add Members or Remove Member.

Figure 7.14 – Add Members or Remove Member

4. Selecting the Add Members or Remove Member button in the previous step will open the Contact Groups detail window on the Contact Group tab to manage the members in the group.

The same steps can be used to add members using the global address book or Contacts address book or for creating a new contact as we did when creating the Contact Group.

5. Save the changes by clicking Contact Group | Save & Close.

Sending a message to a contact group

Sending a message to a contact group is where the real time savings happen. Instead of choosing each individual ID that you want to send the message to, just select the contact group name and all the contacts you added as members of the group will be added to the email. If you put them on the To field, they will be able to see who else the email is addressed to, so you may want to include them in the Bcc line if you have security concerns where you want to prevent everyone in the group from seeing this information.

Compose the email as you normally would for a new email and insert the group contact name in the address fields instead of typing in each individual email ID.

The following steps will show additional methods that are unique to contact groups:

1. Open the contact group that you want to send an email to.
2. Click Contact Group | Email. A new message window will open with the To field populated with the name of the contact group that you want to send an email to.

Figure 7.15 – New email to a contact group

You have the option to leave the name of the contact group in the To field or click the plus sign next to the contact group name and it will expand to show the recipients’ names and email IDs, as shown:

Figure 7.16 – Expanding the contact group to show email IDs

If you choose to leave the name of the contact group in the email’s To field, the recipients will have the names of each person of the group showing in the email they receive, not the name of the contact group that you created.

Forwarding a contact group

There may be times when someone else will need to send an email to your distribution list. Your contact group can be shared with them by you forwarding the contact group to them. This is another time-saver as the person will not have to individually add all the names from your group to a new email. To forward a contact group, take the following steps:

1. Open the People workspace by clicking on the People button in the navigation pane, and then select and open the contact group.
2. Click Contact Group | Forward Group | As an Outlook Contact.

Figure 7.17 – Forwarding a contact group

Note

An alternate method to forward a contact group is to right-click the contact group and click Forward Contact | As an Outlook Contact.

The contact group will be inserted as an attachment in a new email message, and you can fill in the required fields for sending a message as usual.

Figure 7.18 – Contact group attachment

When the recipient or recipients of the email open the email, they can save the attachment with the help of the People button using the drag-and-drop techniques shown in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Outlook.

Deleting a contact group

You may find that you have duplicated a contact in error and need to delete one of the duplicates or you no longer need a contact group.

To delete a contact group, select the contact group that you want to delete, and you can try one of these actions:

• Click Del on the keyboard.
• Go to Home | Delete.
• Right-click on the Contact Group | Delete.

It’s easy to create, manage, and delete contact groups. If you need to send emails over and over to the same people, creating a contact group will be a true time-saver. The way you view your contacts is another time-saver for the way you work. Viewing only the Contacts data that you need and filtering out the rest will be discussed in the next section.

Views

By default, you will see your personal contacts inside of Outlook. You can view other address books by first clicking on the Contacts object, then in the Find group on the ribbon, selecting Address Book. Use the drop-down list under Address Book to see all the address books and contact lists in your organization group.

Figure 7.19 – Address Book

Viewing contacts

Once you enter your contact information, you can see the information arranged in several different views. This is a quick way to get an overall picture of your contacts. You can also manually type in addresses or contacts to add these contacts to your personal contact list. The contacts that you are seeing are only your personal contacts, not your list of corporate contacts. If you are able to access those contacts, you will see how to view them next. To change views, take the following steps:

1. Click the Contacts object, then click View | Change View.

Figure 7.20 – Changing the contacts view

You can change the way you view your contacts from the standard view of People. While in the People view, click Home | View and choose from the following views:

• People
• Business Card
• Card
• Phone
• List

2. Click on each of these views and notice how the names or cards look on the screen.

Don’t worry about changing views; you don’t lose the actual cards, you are just viewing them in a different way. For instance, if you are going to be setting up a calling campaign, the phone list view would be helpful for seeing multiple phone numbers for a contact.

Note

An alternate method to use when changing the view from People is to click on the drop-down button in the Current View section on the Home tab.

Managing views

Views allow you to look at your data in different ways within Outlook. At times, you may find that the default views do not give you the exact data that you want to view. You can use Manage Views... to create a more customized view of your Outlook contacts, which may be adding fields or simply changing the fonts or placement and fields in the view.

Let us understand the steps to manage views:

1. Select the Contacts button on the bottom of the navigation pane.
2. Click View | Current View | Change View | Manage View....
3. From the Manage All Views dialog box, you have options for creating a new view, copying a view to update it, or modifying, renaming, or resetting a view. The Reset button will only appear if the view selected is a view created by Outlook (if it is a custom view, the button will appear as Delete).

Figure 7.21 – Manage All Views

Now, let’s understand the New... view.

Understanding the New... view

To create your own custom view in the Contacts workspace, take the following steps:

1. Click New... in the Manage All Views dialog box.
2. Enter a name for the new view, as shown in Figure 7.22.
3. Select the type of view that you want.
4. Choose the preferred folder option for viewing the new view. You are selecting whether you want the view to be available to everybody, just you, or all contact folders. The default is All Contact folders.

Figure 7.22 – Create a New View

5. Click OK.

Figure 7.23 – Advanced View Settings

6. From Advanced View Settings, select the button that you want to adjust or select (for example, Columns... was selected and the result is shown in Figure 7.24):

Figure 7.24 – Advanced settings – Show Columns

7. The left side of the Show Columns dialog box shows all the available fields and the right side shows all the selected fields to show in the new view. You can select a field and either add or remove it from the list on the right. You can select a field on the right and use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to position the field in the desired order. Click OK.
8. Adjust all settings desired in the Advanced View Settings dialog box. Each button will have a unique dialog box relating to the items to adjust.
9. When you have adjusted all items, you can click Apply View and the view will now show in the Contacts workspace. This view will also be available as a button to select on the Home tab in the ribbon in the Current View section.

Figure 7.25 – New view applied

Although I like how the views are designed, you may find that the fields are not appropriate for your work, or you may have created some additional custom fields that you would like to show. By managing views, you can create those custom views to display the data that you need.

Let’s now discuss the remaining four buttons in the Manage All Views dialog box.

To make it easier to create views, we have the ability to use the following buttons when setting up a custom view. When using New..., we have to select all the fields that we want to set up. When using the other buttons, we can use a template that is created for a table and adjust the template settings accordingly. This is handy if you want all the fields to show in the table view but maybe just want to add a calculated field or a few additional fields to that view. Let’s discuss how you would use these additional buttons:

• Copy...: Select the view that you want to copy from the View Name field. This is your original template. Click Copy.... Enter a name for the new view and click OK. Carry on from step 6 in the section about New... discussed previously.

Figure 7.26 – Name of new view

• Modify...: Select the table that you want to modify from the View Name field. Click Modify... and you will be able to modify the table selected in the Advanced View Settings dialog box. Carry on from step 6 in the section on New... discussed previously.
• Rename...: Select a view from the View Name field. Click Rename... and enter a name for the view in the New name of view field. Click OK.

Figure 7.27 – Rename View

• Reset/Delete: Use this button if you have modified any of the views and want to change it back to the original settings. The following warning will appear asking you to verify that you want to reset the view to its original settings. Click Yes to reset:

Figure 7.28 – Resetting a view

If there is not an original template made for the view, which would be the case for a view you created with the New... button, then the Reset button will display as Delete as there would not be a view to reset to.

Next, we will discuss the Global Address List (GAL) and how you can also customize this address list to your liking.

Viewing the GAL

The GAL is used by any company that hosts its email system using Microsoft Exchange. This gives you the benefit of a centrally managed address book for the entire company. This list is uploaded and managed by your IT department and will be stored on the Exchange server. Using the GAL means you do not have to add every user in your organization to your contact list, but you do need to know how to access this information.

When you start composing an email, you can either type in the name of the person you’d like to send it to or click on the To button to open the selected names and contacts dialog box to select the names from the contact list. To access the GAL, click on the drop-down arrow in the Address Book section and choose Global Address List. You will see your entire list of employees listed here and you can select the email IDs that you want to include in your email here.

Figure 7.29 – Selecting Global Address List

If your system gets slow when selecting email IDs from the GAL, or if your company moves to another email system, you add the address list to your locally stored contacts folder in Outlook. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open a new email window inside Outlook.
2. Select Global Address Book from the drop-down menu.
3. Highlight all the entries in the GAL or the entries that you want. To export the entire GAL, press Ctrl + A to select everything. To manually select the range, click on the first entry, then hold down the Shift key and click on the last item.
4. Right-click the highlighted items and select Add to Contracts. This could take some time depending on the number of contacts you’ve selected and your network speed.
5. Once complete, you can select the email IDs from the contacts list instead of the GAL.

Viewing a contact’s address on a map

When you are viewing the contact information, to the right of the address is a Map It button.

Figure 7.30 – Map It on a contact

Once you click on Map It, you will be taken to Bing Maps with the address of your contact shown in the window. It will identify as much information as possible. You can also click on the Directions button to get detailed driving directions to this location. This is such a time-saver compared to how we found locations 20 years ago.

Figure 7.31 – Bing Maps

The Bing Maps feature is an add-in that is already installed within Outlook and is part of the Office add-ins. If you do not see this feature, your administrator might not have enabled this feature through the Office add-ins for Outlook.

Summary

Outlook is a great email service and its ability to manage and organize more than just email is incredible. In the end, it’s up to you how much you want to utilize all of its capabilities. It’s great as a stand-alone email platform, but add the power behind the calendar and Contacts and it is a great productivity tool. In this chapter, we discussed several features that show you the power behind the Contacts feature. Use this to keep track of not only your company through the GAL or keep your contacts close to home with the People feature. Either way, you won’t be searching too far or too long to find an email address.

I love saving time and in the next chapter, I will show you some additional time-saving tips and tricks that you can use while working with Outlook notes. If you like the sticky notes that people use on their desks, then you will love this electronic version to use with Outlook. I especially like placing notes on my desktop within Windows to keep track of and take notes for several of my projects. Keep reading and I’m sure you will love this little-known secret as well.

Questions

1. I’m running Outlook 365 and I can’t find the People pane. What should I do?
2. How can I use the favorites section on the To-Do pane?
3. Can I email all my contacts at one time through Outlook?
4. I have too many contacts; how I can organize them?
5. What do I need to do to sync my Outlook calendar with my Outlook phone calendar? I can see my emails fine but not the calendar.

Answers

1. The social connector, which people also refer to as the People pane, is available in versions 2016 and earlier. Microsoft has retired that product now in Outlook 365 as of late July 2020.
2. You can show people in the favorites section of the To-Do pane. Right-click on the sender’s email address and choose Add to Favorites. You will see the person’s picture and email address available for use in Outlook. The search box in the favorites will allow you to find people in your emails. Once you click on them in the favorites, you can email them from the open dialog box.
3. Yes, this can be done with a mail merge, with limitations; refer to Chapter 5, Outlook Mail Merge.
4. The easiest and fastest way to organize your contacts is with categories, which allow you to apply color to contacts. For example, you can use red for family and blue for coworkers, or something that makes sense to you. Then, you can sort by color and focus on the group you want. Refer to Chapter 4, Organizing Your Outlook Environment, for a detailed explanation of categories.
5. It can be assumed that you are using either a POP or IMAP account for email, as was discussed in Chapter 3, Managing Email Accounts. POP accounts will not sync anything; IMAP will sync email and folders only. Contacts and calendar items can only be synced with an Exchange account, which is included with a Microsoft 365 subscription, as well as Google Sync.