If you want the ability to use a shared contact folder as an address book, vote for the suggestion in Outlook Uservoice at Add the feature to show shared contacts in the user’s Address Book in Outlook 2016. If the suggestion gets enough votes, Microsoft will consider adding it to a future version.
Microsoft Outlook 2010 supports multiple Exchange server mailboxes. This allows you to open the other mailbox in your profile as another Microsoft Exchange account and once you do this, you will have full access to the contacts folder (along with all of the others folder in the mailbox.)
Delegates should not open their manager's mailbox as a second mailbox in Outlook 2010. Continue opening it as a secondary mailbox in the profile.
For users who connect to Microsoft Exchange server, maintaining a contacts folder in the Public Folders hierarchy is one way to benefit from a group address book that individual users can contribute to. With some extra effort (see below), the Outlook Address Book can also display contacts from another user's mailbox, making it easy for an assistant to use the boss' contacts to address messages.
Display Other User's Contacts in Address Book | Notes | More Information
Display Other User's Contacts in Address Book
This doesn't work in Outlook 2013 and newer.
The process of adding another user's Contacts folder to your own address book display is somewhat involved:
- Create a new Outlook profile that connects directly with the other user's mailbox, not your own, then start Outlook with this profile. If you receive a prompt that Outlook cannot open the folders, you may need to ask the Exchange administrator to grant your Windows user account full access to the other user's mailbox temporarily so that you can complete these steps.
- Right-click the other user's Contacts folder, choose Properties, then switch to the Outlook Address Book tab. Make sure that the Show this folder as an e-mail Address Book box is checked. Under Name of the address book, change the displayname from Contacts (the default) to a name that will distinguish this address list, such as Joe's Contacts if you're in Joe's mailbox.
- Close Outlook.
- In Control Panel | Mail, bring up the properties for the profile that you created in Step 1. In the Microsoft Exchange Server service, change the main mailbox from the other user's to your own. On the Advanced tab of the Exchange Server service, add the other user's mailbox as a secondary mailbox.
- Restart Outlook, using the same profile as in Steps 1 and 4.
After you restart Outlook, when you display the address book, you should see Joe's Contacts listed in the Outlook Address Book along with your own Contacts folder.
Notes
Any contacts folder that you see in the Outlook Address Book can be used as the data source for a merge with Word. However, in some versions of Outlook, you will receive an error if you start a merge with a contacts folder in Public Folders from within Word. The workaround is to start the merge in Outlook instead, displaying the source contacts folder, then choosing Tools | Mail Merge.
Tom Yeager said "A key to its success is that OL 2010 allows multiple Exchange accounts under one profile."
Getting Outlook 2010 to open multiple Exchange accounts is tricky. In a profile with an Exchange server already added, clicking New on the E-mail tab gets an Add New Account dialog that only includes E-Mail Account (that appears to be for POP/IMAP), Text Messaging and Other (Fax Mail Transport). It looks like a second Exchange server account cannot be added. But when you select E-mail Account and then Manually configure server settings or additional server type, you get a new Add New Account dialog with four choices, E-Mail Account is split into Internet E-mail and Microsoft Exchange or compatible service.
I was able to set up the user profile with two Exchange accounts and was able to get the Contacts folder (and a subfolder) as an Outlook Address Book using this method.
You can use auto-account setup (File, Add) but if you go into Account Settings and click New, Exchange will be configured if you choose the first option - Email from ISP or organization. You can use enter your address and password to use auto-account setup or choose manual setup, then Exchange.
I used the process in this article successfully with Outlook 2010 a few years ago and now I cannot get it to work with Outlook 2010. Step 4 says "change the main mailbox from the other user’s to your own". What needs to be done is to change the username (and password and email address) that the profile uses to connect to the Exchange server. In Account Settings, when selecting the Exchange service and clicking Change, the Server Settings appears. But the User Name field is not editable. Has there been some change in Outlook 2010 that makes this field no longer editable? Is there some other place or way to change the user name? How do I "change the main mailbox from the other user’s to your own"?
Yes, things changed in the newer versions - and as far as i know, this no longer works. A few people got it working but it doesn't seem to stick.
No longer works with Outlook 2013 as it doesn't allow you to change the display name for the Outlook Address Book
We could probably use a macro to change the name, if it works otherwise - but when i tried the steps with Outlook 2013, it wouldn't work or was very buggy. Others reported problems as well.
Hi Diane. Thanks for keeping us informed about this. Not being able to add a shared Contacts folder to the Address Book is major problem. Do you know if this has changed, or at least what Microsoft was thinking when they implemented this limitation? On one hand they do this, and on the other they keep saying the Public Folders are to be "deemphasized". Very frustrating.
It hasn't changed yet and I don't expect it to. It's never been supported in any version of Exchange and public folders aren't going away - they changed the storage method (they are now public folder mailboxes).
I'm trying to get this contact folder to show up when I click the To: button in an email message. I have been able to successfully get the shared contact folder to show up in my contacts tree, but cannot get it to appear in the Address Book drop-down list when composing a new email and click the To: button. Any one else having this issue? OL2010
Shared contacts folder can't be easily enabled as an address book and the method on this page that used to enable them as address books no longer works consistently. Sorry.
Is there a way to automatically have all public folders be added as an email address book? Right now we have to manually do this for each public folder that we want included as an address book, and it has to be done anytime a user changes workstations.
The settings should stick for a user - they are stored in the exchange mailbox. I'm not aware of a way to automate it. sorry.
The fix for my situation with Office 2010 is turn off Cached Exchange Mode. No more temporary mailbox moved errors when opening Outlook 2010!!
Many thanks to Diane Poremsky and to all of Slipstick for this method that I have used for over a year. I’d like to suggest a similar but, for me, more successful method of showing another’s contacts in an Address Book. This procedure never results in the "Your mailbox has been temporarily moved..." message that frequently occurred with the published method. (On some computers, I was never able to get that to go away, before now.) Nor did it ever cause the Status Bar message “Online with Microsoft Exchange” rather than the preferred “You are connected to Microsoft Exchange” which I often saw regardless of the state of my Use Cached Exchange Mode setting. My method was tested extensively on several OL2010 installations. A key to its success is that OL 2010 allows multiple Exchange accounts under one profile. So this method will not work with OL 2007, but, likely, will work with OL 2013, which I have not tested. The OL accounts sharing out their contacts were OL 2007 and OL 2010. The Exchange server was Microsoft’s Office 365 which uses Exchange 2013 for my accounts there. Preliminary steps, unknown if necessary, include that the shared out contacts were… Read more »