Default Contacts List in Exchange/Outlook

Hello all,

This is my first post and I hope I can offer help in the future.

We are running MS W2k3 Small Business Server with Exchange, with everybody logging onto its domain. This was put in a few weeks ago. Prior to this, MDaemon served our mail, and all mail and contacts were held locally.

In Outlook, everybody has two accounts: the "Outlook Today" mailbox that is served by Exchange and their old accounts from the MDaeman days.

There is a "Company Contacts" list, with all the company clients and contractors. This is stored in a "Public Folderâ€. I want to have this "Company Contact" list as everybody’s default contact list in his or her "Outlook Today" mailbox. When one person edits this list, I want everybody to see the change.

They can use the old MDaemon account to store personal contacts.

Is this possible?
Is there a tick box solution?
Is this a change which has to be made in Outlook or in Exchange?

I have spent some time on the Microsoft website trying to find out how to do it, but I haven’t been able to find any solution literature.

Regards

Iceman_2001_ie

 

That's basically what the GAL (global address list) is designed to provide. Would that work for you?

 

So I should just transfer all contacts into the GAL?

I'll give it a go, and let you know.

Cheers

Iceman_2001_ie

 

Okay,

Here's where I stand.

1. By Default, staff having been saving new contacts to their Exchange Mailbox 'Contacts' folder (with the default name 'Personal Address Book'). They are not presented with the option to save to the 'Company Contacts' folder in the "Public Folders ".

I want an option to appear everytime somebody tries to save an email address asking them which Address Book they want to save the new contact to.

Is that possible?

2. I have tried adding contacts to the 'Global Address List'. I have full administrator rights on my own machine and on the Server, yet I'm told that I can't create any new contacts in the Global Address List, or any of its subfolders (i.e. All Contacts, All Users, All Groups).

There is something unusual about the 'Global Address List', it only consists of the users who are on the Domain. Is this by design, or is there a tick box which allows you to add more users?

 

If you want those names to be added to the Global Address List you will need to create a "Contact" for each name using Active Directory Users and Computers.

How familiar are you to managing a Windows Active Directory?

I would create a new Organizational Unit (OU) in Active Directory, and then add the contacts to this OU. Then you should be able to grant permissions on that OU to everyone in your organization to allow the properties to be modified.

I've not had to do this so I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but I think it work similar to that.

I will see if I can setup a SBS2003 network in vmware and test this out.