Walt G said:
I don't understand the relationship between the email addresses I type, and
which come up in the 'To' field, and my contacts list. How do I get the
email addresses I type to be included in my contacts?
Walt,
Let's just say the relationship isn't very much.
The first time you
manually type an address (for which there is no contact entry) in the 'To'
field, you must correctly type the full e-mail address. Thereafter,
Outlook's auto-completion cache will offer to "complete" the address when
you begin typing it into a recipient (To, Cc, Bcc) field, until the cache
entry is deleted or overwritten.
For a contact, you can type part of the person's name or (the first) part of
an e-mail address. If the part of the name you entered is unique, Outlook
will automatically select the contact for you. Otherwise, a red squiggly
line will appear beneath the name you entered. Right-click the text you
entered and a list of possible matches appears. For example, let's say you
have Bob Brown and Bob Smith in your contacts. If you type Bob in a
recipient field, Outlook can't determine which Bob you're referring to, so
it will underline the text "Bob" with a red squiggly after you tab out of
the recipient field. If you frequently send e-mail to both Bobs, you could
make a habit of typing a significant part of the correct recipient. If you
want to send e-mail to Bob Smith, a significant (unique) part of the name
would be "Bob S". For some reason, my test of Outlook 2003 didn't consider
"Bob B" significant, but it did "Bob Br".
MAPILab's Add Contacts product is a plugin that allows you to automatically
create contacts when you send new e-mail or reply to e-mail. It's not free,
but at $15 it may be worth trying.
http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/add_contacts/marketplace.html
Disclaimer: I'm not in any way affiliated with MAPILab.
Hope that's helpful,
Ronald Nissley