Effective Strategies to Manage Contacts in Outlook

Read time: 7 minutes

Outlook, developed by Microsoft, stands as a widely embraced email service provider. It has evolved into an indispensable tool for individuals, offering the capability to efficiently arrange mailbox content from various email accounts, such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com. Furthermore, Outlook enables users to seamlessly oversee and structure their emails, tasks, calendars, and contacts.

However, certain Outlook users encounter challenges when it comes to handling their contacts. They may struggle with tasks such as gathering, arranging, and sharing contacts effectively within the Outlook platform. In this blog post, we aim to address these issues comprehensively and provide strategies for efficient contact management in Outlook. Additionally, we will introduce a helpful tool designed to assist you in recovering lost contacts.

Where are Outlook Contacts Stored?

There are various methods to reach your Outlook accounts, including the web-based version, the desktop application, and the mobile app. While this offers excellent accessibility, it can become perplexing when certain aspects of your account are synchronized while others remain unsynchronized.

When it comes to ‘Contacts,’ also referred to as ‘Outlook People’, seeing them in Outlook doesn’t indicate that they are synced to the Microsoft Cloud. To confirm it, log in to your Outlook account and check whether your contact list is similar to your app or not. If it looks like your app, the contacts are stored in the Cloud; if not, they are probably in your Outlook app’s personal address book.

Creating a contact in Outlook is a straightforward process that involves manually inputting the details of the person you wish to add. To accomplish this, simply follow these steps:

• Open Outlook and select the People icon.
• Click on New Contact and Add Details.
• Now, select Save and Close to create a new contact in Outlook.

Note – If a person contacts you through email and you want to save their contact information, you can do it directly from Inbox. Just click on the recipient’s name and select Add to Contacts.

You can also make changes to the created contact. To edit a contact, follow the below steps:

• Select a contact you want to make changes.
• Right-click on it and select Edit Contact.
• Make the changes you want.
• Once edited, click on Save and Close.

As your contact database grows, you’ll discover that it encompasses a diverse range of contacts. This leads to the central question: how can you effectively manage these various types of contacts? Fortunately, Outlook provides a range of tools and features, which may vary depending on your specific account type or the version of Microsoft 365 you’re using. However, in most cases, you’ll have the ability to create contact lists, categorize contacts, and assemble contact groups.

In Outlook, a contact list, also referred to as a distribution list, enables you to effortlessly send emails to multiple recipients at once. Within this contact list, you have the flexibility to include an extensive array of contacts and assign it a specific name. This way, when composing an email, you can easily input the designated list name instead of individually selecting each recipient.
It’s easy to create a list in Outlook, and to do so, follow the below steps:

• Open Outlook and select the People icon.
• In the upper left menu, click on New Contact and choose New Contact list from the drop-down.
• Add the contact you want to add to the list, then click Save and Close.

Collaborating within your team is most effectively achieved through Contact groups, allowing seamless sharing of conversations, emails, and files among team members. To create a contact group, simply follow these steps:

• Open Outlook and select the People icon.
• Click on New Contact and choose New Group from the drop-down.
• Give a name to your group and add members to it.

Once you’ve completed the steps outlined above, an email address will be generated automatically. This email address will be visible to all group members, allowing them to access the associated emails. Sending emails to the group will be limited to members (trusted senders) exclusively. If you wish to enable non-members to send emails, you’ll need to first include them in the trusted senders list.

Outlook’s Address Book serves as the primary contact folder by default. It is where Outlook automatically searches when you’re composing an email or sending a meeting invitation. Within a contact folder, you have the option to organize your email messages, contacts, calendars, and tasks. These folders are particularly valuable when you want to collaborate and share contact lists with a coworker.

Outlook provides the option to organize your emails, tasks, calendars, and contacts by assigning distinct names and colors to various categories. These categories can also be applied to your Outlook contacts, functioning as labels or tags for better organization.

There are some methods to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook, which we have discussed below.

1. Perform Manual Deletion
   To manually delete the duplicated contacts, follow the below steps:
   • Open Outlook and select the People icon.
   • Click on Change View and select the phone icon under the View menu.
   • Select all the duplicate contacts you want to delete.
   • Now, right-click and select the Delete option to remove them.

   Note –
   If you have more than 100 duplicate contacts to delete, we do not recommend using this method, as it can be quite laborious. In such cases, we recommend utilizing the export and re-import contacts approach instead.In this method, firstly, you can export all your contacts to CSV format, merge duplicate contacts, and then import them into your Outlook contact list. For a quick solution, you can also use a third-party tool named Kernel for Outlook Duplicates Remover.

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2. Prevent Duplicate Contacts in Outlook
   ou can effortlessly achieve this by activating the built-in duplicate contact detector feature in Outlook. To do this, simply follow these steps:
   • Open Outlook and select File > Options > People (Contacts).
   • Under the Names and filling tab, enable check for duplicates when saving new contacts and press OK.

Conclusion

I hope you find this blog helpful and that you are now aware of efficiently managing the contacts in Outlook. The above-discussed post will help you create, edit, and organize contacts and assist you in dealing with duplicate contacts.

But sometimes, because of Outlook data file corruption issues, you might lose your contacts and other important files from Outlook. In this situation, we suggest you use a third-party tool named Kernel for Outlook PST Repair, which can quickly recover deleted contacts in Outlook. To know more about this tool, download its free trial version.