Autocomplete (Outlook Express 6)

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I would be grateful if someone could tell me how to change the sequence that Autocomplete uses to pick up recipients from my Address Book. Currently it chooses recipients in reverse alphabetical sequence and no amount of changing the sort sequence of my Address Book makes any difference.

For example, it picks up “useful (work)” first instead of “useful (home)” when I enter “u”.

Thank you.

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First try–

Start>run>wab. Start/run/wab/? will also display a list of switches. Then on toolbar go to View>Sortby>Last Name and see if that helps. You also might try ascending/descending and see what that does for you. Notice you can confer details on it and so on. To view all contacts in all folders, regardless of which Identity is currently logged on, click Start| Run and type wab /a. If needed, click View| Folders and Groups to see the folders. You can now find any duplicates and move them to the Shared Contacts folder, rather than in each Identity’s folder.

The Windows Address Book is actually a separate program that is used by OE. Few users discover that this program, usually found at C:Program FilesOutlook Expresswab.exe, can be used outside of Outlook Express. Since the path to wab.exe is stored in the default Windows path, you can usually start WAB by clicking Start| Run and typing wab to open the default OE WAB. But by adding the /? command line switch, you can see that WAB has possibilities beyond just the OE Address Book, namely standalone WABs that function outside of OE.

Post back and tell me if this helps autocomplete in the alphabetical order you want.

SMBP

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Thanks for the info on WAB. I looked at the command line switches but they did not seem to apply to this issue. I have a very simple Address Book structure with all contacts in the Main Contacts folder and there are no duplicates. I tried sorting the list every which way, but Autocomplete doesn’t seem to take any notice of it. It just continues to pick up the LAST recipient in the list matching what I type instead of the first, for example “useful (work)” ahead of “useful (home)”.

Any other things I could try?

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I was worried about the simple toolbar sorting not working for you, because it might have been the first place you had already tried, and it seemed too easy, but I thought it a first place to start, and I wanted you to know that you can make multiple address books if you need to. I also read last night that the address book in Outlook 2003 is supposed to be much improved, so you might want to consider it and export your info to it but put a couple entries in first and see if it has the problem connected with autocomplete.

I will go back to the drawing board and see if I can find some information on a solved exact same problem for you soon. Maybe also other loungers with long OE address book experience will jump in and can suggest a fix for you.

SMBP

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