Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell

Address Books

In simple terms, an address book is where Outlook stores contact information. Address Books are a messy topic because:

• There can potentially be more than one, confusing users no end. Quickly now, what’s the difference between the Outlook Address Book, a Personal Address Book, the Global Address Book, and the Windows Address Book?

• The name suggests a separate, discrete entity. And in some situations, this is indeed the case (the Personal Address Book, for example). In other situations, the term address book refers to an interface that collects and synchronizes contact information.

• Address Book dialogs are both visually and organizationally different than the form displayed when a contact record is opened from the Outlook Contacts folder. Because of this, the relationship between the Address Book and the Outlook Contacts folder is not readily apparent.

Let’s try to clear this topic up as clearly and as concisely as possible. Depending on your Outlook installation, you can have one or more of the following Address Books on your system:

Outlook Address Book (OAB)—IMO

OK, this is the toughest nut to crack, so we might as well do it first—everything else is relatively easy after this. IMO Outlook saves contact information to the Outlook Address Book. The Outlook Address Book is a property assigned to a source of contact information. This source can be the Outlook Contacts folder or the data store used by Outlook Express.

The data store used by Outlook is automatically selected ...