Unknown names in drop down

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nancy
  • Start date Start date
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Nancy

I suddenly have unknown names showing up in Outlook XP.
Who are they and how did they get there? I used search
to check contacts, but these people are invisible!
 
In what drop down?

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Replies sent to my e-mail address will probably not be answered --
please reply only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***


In
 
When one begins typing a name in the To: line, I get a
dropdown of suggestions matching the first three
letters. For example, I type Jim and get a list of Jim,
Jimmy, Jim and Mary, Jim Smith, etc. and can select one
rather than typing the entire address. A short cut.
 
Possibly others using your computer are sending messages to those people -
but the truth is, I don't have that option in Outlook. I can click on the
To button to get to a list of contacts from my Contacts list and then select
from it. Are you saying your address book itself has a whole bunch of new
contacts that you don't recognize (or is this ONLY the drop down box)?

I'm a little confused. I have that all the time with IE (and find it
useful), but I don't have those dropboxes in the To: section on my version
of Outlook (or if they do exist, I don't know how to turn them on). Do you
have the SP3 service pack installed?
 
None of these people are in my address book. I sent
a "Who Are You" e-mail to all of them and the only one
who replied is someone I have never written to, unless it
was a "Reply to All" on someone else's e-mail. Anyway,
the names only show up in the dropdown box.

I'm using Outlook 2002 (Office XP) SP-2. It's in
Options/E-mail Options/Advanced E-mail Options.
Under "When sending an E-mail" there's a check box
for "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc
fields" that I thought was a default setting. If you
don't have it then maybe I checked it one time when I was
making other changes. I suppose the question becomes,
what source does outlook use for those suggestions. As I
said, these people are NOT in my address book.

By the way, is there any quick way to find this
discussion? Like a Go To date or something? I tried the
Search button, but once I enter my criteria, there's no
way to say go or search or boo. Or I'm dumb, which is a
definite possibility! :)

Thanks for you help. This really has me stumped and I'm
concerned someone is accessing my e-mail from outside.
This is a home computer and I'm the primary user. My son
and daughter check their mail when they're visiting, but
they both use on-line services and doesn't even use
Outlook.
 
Outlook 2002 has an "AutoComplete" feature (which is enabled if you have
that "Suggest names..." box checked) and it works off of e-mail addresses
that have previously been typed into the To, CC, or BCC fields...not against
your address book/contacts list. It's strange that there would be unknown
addresses in there if you hadn't typed them in and your kids don't use
Outlook when they visit.

If you want to delete individual entries from the AutoComplete cache, start
typing in a name and when the list comes up, point to the entry you want to
delete (so that it's highlighted) and press Delete. To delete the whole
cache and start over, look for a file with an .NK2 extension and rename it
or move it. Outlook will start a new cache file the next time an e-mail
address is typed into the To: box. Note that if you're using Windows 2000
or XP, you'll need to search in hidden and system folders to find the .NK2
file (it also helps to have file extensions visible).

As for your question about searching for old threads -- you're using the Web
interface to access the newsgroups, and its search capabilities are not very
good. You might want to consider using Outlook Express, as your newsreader,
or one of the many other newsreader programs available; it's generally much
easier to find things that way. For example, in Outlook Express you can
mark a thread as "watched", which turns the text in the Messages list red
and also allows you to filter for just those "watched" threads. To get to
the Outlook Newsreader, which is Outlook Express in a "news only" mode with
no mail functions, go into Outlook's View menu and click Go, then News. To
access these MS public newsgroups you can add the "msnews.microsoft.com"
news server, or you can check your ISP's news server to see if it carries
the MS groups. Good luck!

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Replies sent to my e-mail address will probably not be answered --
please reply only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***


In
 
If you use a spam program or other program that will send
a reply such as "abuse.org" or something, than there
could be hundreds of unwanted names in your autocomplete
file. That's why we liked the Owtlook File Editor, it
gave us the ability to sort the autocomplete file and
sift out the numerous unwanted entries. When closed, the
file size is reduced and all that remains are valid
entries. Try it, you'll probably like it.
 
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