When I am in my Outlook inbox folder if i pull up the address book and find a
user then clip on it to pull up the users properties and click on add to


contacts I get this message: some names could not be added to contacts, no
action taken. Why can't I do this?

Thanks,
Steve Harmeson

This is a very confusing question.
The Outlook Address Book is simply a display of electronic addresses that reside in one of your Contacts Folders.
It contains no data of its own.
By definition this data is already in a Contacts Folder. What are you trying to do?
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

What i was looking for was the users phone number, if I added to my contact folder I don't have to look through the whole address book.

Did you not read my post? This still makes no sense. There is no such thing as a Contact that resides in the address book view that does not already reside in your Contacts Folder. It can't happen. To appear in the address book, the Contact must already exist in your Contacts Folder.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

I guess I was not clear enough

We have a "global address list" for our corporation...
When I get the person name in the global address book and right click I get to options Properties -> Add to contacts
when I click on add to contacts I get the message about not being able to do this..
Another person here does the same thing and it adds the name to his contact list...

What is causing this?????

Oh for heavens sake. You sure do leave out all the relevant information.
GAL's are an Exchange feature, not an Outlook feature. Repost in the right
group and include all relevant information. Save us both some time.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

I just found this forum, and I had to join after reading this post...Wow! Russ, take a pill, have a drink, get laid or something! Give the guy a little slack...

Whether or not it's the right place to post the solution (because apparently the question should not have been posted here in the first place), people are still going to come here looking for the solution because search engines bring it up. So, I'm posting my solution here:

After searching high and low, I finally gave up and started playing with Outlook myself to solve this. Now that I've come up with a fix, I figure I'll try to save all of you some time and post it.

Now that I know the solution for me, let me predict something for you: The user has (or at least had, at one time) multiple PST files open at the same time. The problem stems from Outlook's confusion as to where to put the contacts that you add, as each PST file has its own Contacts folder.

For me, I was able to view all of the Contacts folders my Outlook was aware of by clicking Tools > Address Book, then (within the Address Book window) Tools > Options. For me, there were multiple (5) entries in the "Keep personal addresses in:" drop down box. You can view which Contacts folder belongs to which PST file by selecting each Contacts entry in the bottom "When sending mail..." list one by one, and clicking Properties. Once you find the right Contacts folder (the one that leads to the Local PST file currently in use), remember its position in the list, and then select the corresponding Contacts entry in the "Keep personal addresses in:" drop down box.

Just as a note, what was actually happening to me was the drop down box was set to a Contacts folder stored in a PST file that I do not access anymore, hence Outlook not being able to add contacts to it.

Hope this works for you. Good luck.

Rob

Rob - Awesome & Thx. Been battling this 4 some time & kept putting up with it. Nice 2 have it fixed. Some times a chill pill is needed. Especially with us techies.