Insert Outlook Address in Word (Word 2000/Outlook 2000)

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Does anyone know of a way that a secretary would be able to see the Contacts folders of her/his assignments when using the Insert Address function? The secretaries do have full delegate permission on their attorneys’ Contacts folders, and are actually sharing the folders on their own desktops. The attorneys’ folders just don’t appear as Outlook address books when they use the Insert address function. We do know that you can acccess Public folders. I’ve searched this forum, but can’t find a way. Suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks.

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Wouldn’t that be nice…hope some guru can point out a way to do it. I have looked and looked myself…and end up advising the secretary to COPY the Contacts folder into a subfolder in his/her Contacts, then make sure that is set as an address book in Outlook, then it will be available for Insert Address — only problem is they need to make sure to keep the folder copy refreshed…not an elegant solution, but it works. Oh, and close both programs and re-open them after making this change so that the change can take effect.

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I’ve used that method myself. I believe that public folders are also available as Outlook address books, and could be used. I’m hoping that there’s something I don’t know about – maybe even at the Exchange server level – that could let them use the actual folder. As you mentioned, the risk is that maintenance issue – and the fact that the copied folder may not be up to date. Thanks for the suggestion, tho’! You always have good ones, and I appreciate your posts.

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If you have Access 2000 you might try using it. I’m not too good with Word, so I don’t know the ins-and-outs of using Acess or MS Query as a data source for Word merges. There may be challenges in getting the right contact. There will also be a lag time as Word launches Access, and Access establishes the link. But, I do know that if you have the attorney/manager’s mailbox in your folder list, then Access can see it and use it as a linked table.

An alternative, that requires a little code and having the other person’s mailbox in your folder list, would be to write a little code in Outlook that launches Word with a template that has some form fields. The code would take data from the selected contact (that’s why you need to use the folder list) and would fill in form fields.

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I’ll pass your ideas on to our “developer,” and see what he thinks. The secretaries who are sharing attorneys’ Contacts folders do have the folder in their folder lists, so that wouldn’t be an issue. However, I suspect that he will not be too happy about opening Word from Outlook. I know that there can be issues with normal.dot and DOCS Open when running multiple sessions of Word – one of the reasons we try to discourage people from using Word as the e-mail editor.

Thanks for your suggestions. Any and all are very helpful. I appreciate them.

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Have you considered putting all the contacts into a shared folder – thereby making them available to all. You can use categories to group all the contacts by each individual and create views for each attorney so they don’t need to see the whole set.

Apologies if I have missed something and this is totally out of the picture.

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Thanks for the suggestion. We’ve thought about it, yes, but in a law firm so much information is confidential that, in some cases, the fact that a person appears on a list could breach confidentiality, particularly if it appeared in a public folder. Not only that, but with as large a firm as we have – 170 attorneys – that would be a huge folder.

We have had people who have created a public folder between themselves with limited permissions, and copied all contacts into it. The problem with that, of course, is keeping it synchronized with the “regular” Contacts folder. The dream here is a way to give a delegate permission to see the actual folder for another person as an Outlook address book for a merge.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

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There’s software at Slipstic.com that will allow a user to synchronise their outlook contact with a public contacts folder (which you can secure)
Or, a full blown Contact management software that links in with MAPI may be a better long term solution.

Hope this helps

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Thank you for the suggestion. I checked out the site and forwarded the information to the powers that be. That appears to be the only potentially workable option, so far – if we want to invest in another program.

I’m disappointed that Microsoft hasn’t provided a way to do this. It would seem to be a logical option to have been included in the software, as secretaries always need to be able to merge from their assignments’ Contacts folders.

Many thanks for your response. I always appreciate the help we get here.

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