Ben’s Tech Blog

Summary: To force Outlook to resolve a name from the Contacts folder instead or the GAL, add ‘(e’ after the name that you want to resolve.

If you’re using Outlook in a corporate environment, you will most likely use two address books: the global address list (GAL) and your Outlook contacts.  The order in which these are searched when performing a ‘Check Names’ is determined by the order specified in your profile.  In Outlook 2003, you can modify the order by opening the address book and clicking on Tools, then Options.  You will be presented with the following dialog box, and can use the arrows to the right of the lower box to change the order of the address books.

In most cases you will specify the GAL as the first entry and your Contacts as the second entry as most users send a greater volume of emails internally than externally.The problem however is that if you want perform a check names for an external recipient and you have a large GAL, chances are the name is going to resolve to one or more names in the GAL and not the recipient in your Contacts folder.  A while back I discovered a little trick to overcome this.  The display name of recipients in your Contacts folder is suffixed with ‘(email)’, so all you need to do to ensure that the name that you enter will resolve against your Contacts folder instead of your GAL is to include ‘(E’ after the name.  For example, if you have a recipient called John Black in the GAL, and a recipient called John White in your contacts folder, typing ‘John (e’ and performing a ‘check names’ will force Outlook to resolve the name to John White from your Contacts folder, because the ‘(e’ doesn’t exist in the display name for John Black in the GAL.

This trick regularly saves me time so I thought I’d share it with you