I think I am having the exact same problem.
I'm using CR 8.5 Developer Edition and Exchange 5.5. I just bought CR for the first time, and before starting my VB and ASP project, I just thought I'd give the Exchange reporting functionality a test drive.
In our Public Folders hierarchy, we have a Contacts folder, which, in turn, has a Journal subfolder. In that contacts folder, we have created a custom form with some user-defined fields specifically designed to meet the needs of our sales and marketing group.
We have changed the message class of all the contacts in this folder to use the custom form so that end users can have access to a special tab that contains the user-defined fields.
In the CR report designer (the wizard or "expert"

, I am able to successfully connect to the Exchange Server (through the Exchange Folders/Address Book option , rather than the Outlook option) and open the contacts folder. But in the list of fields it returns, I see only my user-defined fields, a few odd (possibly system) fields, and some miscellaneous others but none of the core contact fileds like first name, last name, address, city, state, zip and the like.
When I called support, they asked me to send them the version number of all the DLL's used to access the Exchange server -- these are listed somewhere in one of the user guides. I thought this was pretty lame since the product is fresh out of the box and I don't see any obvious patches for it on their web site. They did not seem to be familiar with this problem, which is why I am somewhat happy to see I am not the only person experiencing it. If the problem is reproducable, then it's likely not an anomaly.
And since you are using Exchange 2000 and I'm using Exchange 5.5, but we are both using CR 8.5, my guess is that it is a CR problem.
If anyone has experience with this issue or a workaround, or any clue at all, I'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks.
TWR