How does Outlook's auto-complete work?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick Altman
  • Start date Start date
R

Rick Altman

Sometime about six weeks ago, it seems that Outlook has become much more
stingy in how it provides suggestions for email addresses when I type in the
To line. It will only suggest from email addresses that it finds in my
Inbox, whereas I thought that previously it would also keep a cache of
recently used adresses or make suggestions from other folders.

Did I hallucinate that? Did a setting get changed somewhere? While my
Outlook usage is constant, in the last month, I have probably had to track
down an address from my Sent Items about a dozen times, while normally I
don't have to do that at all; I just start typing and Outlook presents the
address to me.

I would appreciate some insight into how this function works and what might
have changed six weeks ago. Many thanks...




Rick A.
Pleasanton CA
 
No setting changed. It works the same as always. It has nothing to do with
your Inbox unless you've sent messages to those senders in the past.
Provide evidence to the contrary. It is far more likely that Outlook has
simply stopped writing to your autocompletion cache, which is common and is
the symptom of a corrupt profile. Create a new Outlook profile to restore
this function.
 
Thanks, Russ --

Does creating a new profile require that I create a new .pst file, or can I
use the existing one?



RA
 
You can use your existing PST file.
Just open it in the new profile and set it to be your default. Then restart
Outlook.
 
Many thanks for the help. One last question:

Can I copy the profile, or would that just duplicate the corruption? Must I
add a new profile from scratch and recreate my mailboxes in them?
 
Unfortunately, copying the profile usually just copies the problem as well.
Best to create a new one from scratch.
 
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