Phone Link "Messages" shows phone numbers, not names and photos

I use Phone Link on my Windows 11 PC to text message through my Samsung S22+ phone. I use the desktop Outlook client on my PC and have my Outlook contacts synchronize with the Samsung Contacts app on my phone. A couple of months ago, I began to notice that the names and photos of some of the people with whom I text were no longer showing up in the Phone Link "Messages" list; just their phone numbers. Also, when I clicked "+ New message" in Phone Link, and typed their name, they never showed up in the list of matching contacts from which to choose. This was very frustrating, especially since those contacts were the ones with whom I text most often.

I tried just about everything I could think of - uninstall/reinstalling Phone Link on the S22+ and my PC, multiple syncing options, etc., all to no avail. Then I noticed that the format of the number that showed up in Phone Link was different than what I had in my Outlook contacts. The numbers in Phone Link all showed up with a leading "+1" and had a dash after the area code without parentheses, like this: "+1 123-555-1212" but the numbers in Outlook Contacts showed up like this "(123) 555-1212". I thought the issue might be a database lookup problem, so I tried to enter the same number format in Outlook that appears in Phone Link: "+1 123-555-1212". But Outlook would NOT let me enter this format! It automatically put parentheses around the area code and removed the first hyphen, like this: "+1 (123) 555-1212".

When the new contacts manager for Outlook.com (Outlook on the web) was launched a short while ago, I used the Contacts editor on those contacts and WAS SUCCESSFUL in entering the phone number in the exact format that appears in Phone Link: "+1 123-555-1212". When I sync'd my contacts to my phone, PRESTO! The names and photos of those contacts reappeared in Phone Link "Messages"! So, if you are having problems seeing a phone number instead of names and photos in the Phone Link "Messages" app, try this!