If you make frequent changes to the offline address book, you may want to
modify the way that Outlook computers on your network access the Address
Book. You can disable the downloading of the offline address book and force
the Outlook computers to use the online Global Address List when they use
Cached Exchange Mode.
To do this, add the following registry value to the computers, as
appropriate for the version of Outlook that you are running.
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Outlook 2007
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Cached Mode
Parameter: DownloadOAB
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0
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Outlook 2003
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Cached Mode
Parameter: DownloadOAB
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0
By using the value 0 (zero), the offline address book is not downloaded
automatically, and Outlook must contact the online global address list. For
more information about the values for the DownloadOAB registry parameter,
click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft
Knowledge Base:
823580 (
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823580/) How to configure how the
Offline Address Book is downloaded when you use Outlook in Cached Exchange
Mode
As per this article, if offline address book (.oab) files were previously
downloaded and were associated with a MAPI profile for Outlook, this setting
will not have the correct effect. To use this setting, you must set the
registry value, remove any .oab files from the local computer, and then
synchronize.