OK - Let me try again.
1. I have Office Outlook 2003, SP2 with all updates installed.
2. I have several distribution lists (DLs) made up of contacts from a
Contacts subfolder
3. At (seemingly) random intervals, the following things begin to happen:
a) If I double-click on a DL member when viewing the DL, in this example,
"John Doe", I get a dialog box with the following text, "Cannot find
contact
John Doe. It may have been deleted or moved from its original location.
Would you like to remove it from this list?" None of the contacts have
been
moved or deleted.
b) Clicking on "Update Now" in the DL window results in a dialog box with
the following text, "One or more members of this distribution list cannot
be
found. Would you like to: () Remove the lost members () Try to repair the
lost members and remove only those that cannot be resolved () Cancel this
operation and do not change any members. If I try to repair the members,
the
contacts are replaced with only e-mail addresses, and the contact icon
changes to a rolodex-looking icon.
c) When sending e-mails after these symptoms appear, sometimes Outlook can
resolve the addresses from the DL, sometimes it can't and says something
like
that it can't find the e-mail address for a contact with the name of the
DL.
4. Something I noticed just now, when opening the address book from either
the toolbar button or by clicking the "To:" button when composing an
e-mail
the Contact subfolder with these contacts in it shows up in the address
book,
but it appears to be empty. Opening the contact subfolder with the
contacts
in it from the folder list pane shows all the contacts. "Show this folder
as
an e-mail Address Book" in the properties dialog box is checked for this
subfolder. Unchecking it and hitting "OK" and then openign the properties
dialog box again and checking the "Show this folder as an e-mail Address
Book" and hitting "OK" allows me to see the contacts in the address book
again, but the DLs still have problems.
5. The only thing I can think of that changed the contacts was that I had
changed the view of the contact subfolder to group contacts by category.
Switching back to the previous view does not resolve the problem.
My best guess is that the DLs use some strange static field to identify
the
contact via the address book (a checksum maybe?) and when ANY change is
made
to a contact, the field changes and it cannot find the contact. Perhaps
because the contacts are in a subfolder, maybe the attempt to repair the
lost
members does not search contacts subfolders, or finds the e-mails alone
from
a higher priority list?
I hope that was a little more helpful.
BTW - the forum keeps saying it's busy and I lost this message a couple
times trying to post it. So folks, save your replies to a text file
before
trying to post to the forum.
Thanks,
Ken
Russ Valentine said:
That doesn't clarify anything. My question remains the same.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
It was in the subject line, though it got truncated.
"Cannot find contact John Doe. It may have been deleted or moved from
its
original location. Would you like to remove it from this list?"
:
Can you provide a more accurate and complete description of your
problem?
"I
get this message" is rather lacking in detail for those of us who are
here
in a newsgroup and not looking over your shoulder.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Outlook 2003 SP2 - All updates.
I get this message for contacts in several distribution lists. It
appears
seemingly randomly even though all contacts in the DL have not been
moved.
The contacts in the DL are in a subfolder of the Contacts folder.
MS KB search is useless per usual, though it did come up with an
entry
saying that this issue had been fixed in a previous update.
Anyone know what is going on?
thanks