If you enter a Home address for most people, but not a Business address, you may want the Home address to appear by default when you open a new Contact item. This can't be done in Microsoft Outlook 97 or Outlook 98, but is very simple to accomplish with a custom Contact form in all newer Outlook versions.

Create a custom form

To Create a custom Contact form:

1. Switch to the Contacts folder.
2. Open a new contact.
3. Switch the address selector from Business to Home.
4. Add a check to the box to use it as the default mailing address (required for Outlook 2002 and above).
5. Choose Tools | Forms | Publish Form. (Outlook 2007 instructions below)
6. The Publish Form As dialog should show the form as being published in Outlook Folders, under Contacts. That’s what you want to do. If it doesn’t show the Contacts folder as the publication location, you’ll need to use the Look In drop-down list and Browse button to get to the Contacts folder.
7. Set the Display name and Form name to Home.
8. Click Publish.

Under the Actions menu in the Contacts folder, you should now see a new entry at the bottom — New Home. Click this to bring up a new Contact item, showing the Home address box.

Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010

While the basic steps are the same for all versions of Outlook, the menus are different in Outlook 2007/2010.

If using Outlook 2007, you need to show the Developer Ribbon to see the Publish options. From the Office orb (formerly File menu) click the Editor options button. add a check to ‘Show developer tab’ is in the Popular tab section and return to Outlook. Select the Developer tab on the ribbon and publish the form.

In Outlook 2010, go to File tab, Options, Customize Ribbon and enable the developer tab (on the right side of the dialog.) Return to Outlook and use the Publish command on the now-visible Developer ribbon.

Video Tutorial: How to set the Home address as Default

Set the Home address as default

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Using the Custom Form

If you don't want to create your own form, download a sample form. You’ll need to open the .oft file and publish it.

To make your new form the default for your Contacts folder, see To apply a new form to a folder.

To convert existing contacts to use the new form, use DocMessageClass

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Last reviewed on Dec 4, 2011