Contacts from To: screen

[tpittman]

Hi,

We're running Exchange2k on a Win2k server, going on 3 years now after migrating from NT4 and Exchange 5.5.

One user reported to me today that suddenly he can't see his contacts from the To: screen on a new email, but he can see them fine when he goes to the Contacts screen normally. He is using Windows XP sp2 with Outlook 2000. The Contacts folder is listed under Outlook Address Book (it's set to be listed in OAB) and we can select it, but it shows no contents. If I click Find and enter something I know is in his contacts it will display the results, so it's connected to the Contacts folder but just isn't showing the items. If I connect to his mailbox from my workstation running WinXPsp2 and Outlook 2003 I can see his contacts from the To: screen, but if I try a different machine running Outlook 2000 I get the same effect.

No one else has reported any problems, and we haven't made any changes to the database in a long time. Does anyone have any solutions or suggestions on where to go from here?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[tpittman]

Well, I exported all of his items to a .pst, deleted his mailbox, and created a new mailbox. At that point I created a contact and was able to see it from the To: screen. Then imported his items back into Outlook and now the same effect is occurring. Can anyone help me figure out how to determine if one of the contacts might be corrupt?

 

[tpittman]

Figured it out: He had 10 or so contacts that had a blank "File As" entry. There was a thread in the Email Issues forum that hinted at that so I checked it. When I opened those 10 they had something listed in File As but it wasn't really there, as Clippy barked about a blank File As line when I tried to save them, so I re-selected something from the File As drop down list and saved each of them and now it's working.