Contacts are not available in the Address Book

When trying to use the Address Book to address a message to a contact you could find that the contact from your Contact folder aren’t listed. Here are the two things you’ll need to check and set correctly.

• Make sure the Outlook Address Book service is added to the profile
• Make sure that the Contacts folder is marked as an Outlook Address Book

Make sure the Outlook Address Book service is added to the profile

To do this go to Tools-> E-mail Accounts-> option View or change existing directories or address books-> button Next
If the Outlook Address Book service is added already continue at next step
If the Outlook Address Book is not added;>

1. click the Add… button
2. select Additional Address Books and click Next
3. choose Outlook Address Book and click Next
4. You’ll be prompted that you must close and restart Outlook for changes to take effect
5. Press OK and close and restart Outlook
6. The service is now added

Make sure that the Contacts folder is marked as an Outlook Address Book

If the Outlook Address Book service is added into the profile you can make any Contacts folder (so even the addtitional ones you may have made yourself already) show in the Address Book. To do so rightclick the Contacts folder and choose Properties-> tab Outlook Address Book-> select option Show this folder as an e-mail Address Book.

You should now be able to select Contacts by using the Address Book.

Exception

When the Outlook Address Book service has already been added and the option to select the Contacts folder as an Outlook Address Book is still greyed out, it means that the Outlook Address Book service is corrupted. To fix this you can remove the Outlook Address Book service, restart Outlook, and then add it again as indicated by the steps above. Sadly this workaround will not work in Outlook 2007 as removing the Outlook Address Book service is not supported in Outlook 2007. In this case you must recreate your mail profile.