Global Address List Not Showing in Outlook

<span id="hs_cos_wrapper_name" class="hs_cos_wrapper hs_cos_wrapper_meta_field hs_cos_wrapper_type_text" style="" data-hs-cos-general-type="meta_field" data-hs-cos-type="text" >Global Address List Not Showing in Outlook</span>

Twan van Beers
06 June, 2014

We’ve had reports from users who are using Outlook QuickSteps and find that when they look for a contact within the QuickStep they are not shown the Global Address Book. Instead what they see is the Personal Address Book. The reason for this is the registry key HKLM\Software\Clients\Mail\(Default) not being set to Microsoft Outlook. In order to test this out we’ve set this to Lotus Notes. Let’s move on to reproduce the problem. Within Outlook click on the To Manager QuickStep and the following screen should be shown

Now when you click on the To button you see the following screen

Hmm as you can see this doesn’t look like the normal Global Address List and is in fact the Personal Address Book. Click Cancel on these two dialogs to get back to Outlook itself. Now let’s change HKLM\Software\Clients\Mail\(Default) to Microsoft Outlook. Repeat the above process (To Manager QuickStep and click To) and sure enough now you see the Global Address List as expected.

This problem happens often where a company has been migrated to Outlook from another email platform such as Domino. Note that the default mail client settings within Outlook, or answering Yes if Outlook asks if it should be the default mail client often doesn’t set this value due to UAC. So if you have any problems seeing the Global Address List then make sure the registry key is set to Microsoft Outlook.

Twan van Beers

Twan is a senior consultant with over 30 years of experience. He has a wide range of skills including Messaging, Active Directory, SQL, Networking and Firewalls. Twan loves to write scripts and get deep and dirty into debugging code, in order to understand and resolve the most complex of problems.