I recently came across a post in the Dynamics Forums. The post indicated the the CRM Outlook Client Address Book was not populating with data as expected. The post was originally created in early 2010 and resurfaced because another user was experiencing the same issue. Interestingly enough, the person who originally posted the issue over a year ago joined in the discussion again and indicated that she was still experiencing the problem. After a little back and forth and some additional research, I was able to find what I believe is the solution.
The CRM Outlook Client has an Address Book feature that contains a list of e-mail address that you can use when sending e-mail from Outlook. This is a great feature in that you can quickly find a list of Addresses for CRM records like Contacts, Accounts, Queues, Leads, etc. and then add the record to the e-mail.
The issue this person was experiencing was that the Address Book for CRM Contacts and some of the other CRM entities was not populating as expected. The user options were set correctly to update the Address Book but they were not seeing all the records. After a bit of research, I came across this great article on The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog and although dated was still relevant.
The CRM Outlook Client Address Book is populated from cached data that is stored in the User’s Profile folder: <userprofile>\Application Data\Microsoft\MSCRM\ABP\ The fix for this particular issue was to delete the files found in that data store and allow the CRM Outlook Client to re-sync the data.
In reading through the article, there can be several reasons why the list of addresses for a particular entity might not include all the records you expect. For example, if a Contact or other record does not have an e-mail address in the primary e-mail address field, it will not show in the CRM Outlook Client Contact Address Book. The good news is that whatever the issue might be that is impacting your ability to use this great feature, it is easily addressed.
Cheers!
Donna Edwards 
How do you keep CRM Contacts from populating into the Outlook address book?
The address book is managed in the CRM OUtlook Client settings under the Address Book tab. Take a look at the options in that section to determine the best options for what you would like to see in your address book.
Thanks for the great crm technical tips. We have couple of users having this same issue. Cleaning the MS CRM Temp client files did not fix the issue permanently. We had to clean these files quite often .Is this common? If yes, can we write a batch file to clean this SQL CE files periodically? Appreciate your suggestion.
Thanks,
Vijay.K
I don’t think your issue is common but others could be experiencing it. I’m not sure what is corrupting the file but you could consider writing a Windows job to delete the files on a nightly basis, or a couple of times a week and allow it to recreate itself when Outlook is opened. I’m sure there are other alternatives that you can explore like possibly looking into the machine that is having this issue and optimize it to run with the CRM Outlook Client, ensure the user’s OST file is cleaned up, the profile does not have issues…..
Hi Donna,
I was wondering if you could assist, I have been unable to find any outlook 2010 related materials. I have an issue in our office where the CRM contacts are not sorted and they are all over the place in the listing. I tried to locat the mentioned path in your article but I suspect it doesn’t apply as I am unable to locate such a folder in the user profile. I tried removing the org and re adding it but the results are the same. How does one ensure the contact address book is an a-z format? Not picky on first name, last name or vice versa ( which I tried that setting and it didn’t make a difference) just want to see some order in listing.
Any suggestions?
Thank you in Advance.
John
Hi John,
My CRM Address book is i alphabetical order and I’ve never run into this issue. I suspect this is an Outlook setting but not able to point you to the right one.
I apologize that I could not be of more help at this time.
Thanks for the feedback Donna, I am going to see if routing to the book is an issue.
I did find a solution of removing the Org in Config wizard and then opening outlook and re-adding the Org fixed the problem But that only worked with RU11. I have since updated to RU14 hoping to solve the problem but RU14 brought the issue back and my previous solution won’t work now.
If you happen to think of something else, I am all ears.
Thanks Again 🙂
John
Having this issue as well…Anything ever solved?
I found the issue to be in the CRM options for outlook, in the address book tab you need to select ‘Match all contacts’ for the contact address book to show in outlook. When the address book goes out of wack (ie, can’t search or not alpha order) chances are the Roll-ups on the client doesn’t match what the server is running or at least that’s the common one for our address book issues.
Hope that helps Stephen, sorry for the delayed response, you likely have it figured out by now, just wanted to post it for future use.