Why did Outlook send email to deleted contacts out of a group?

Anonymous
2013-02-11T11:57:48+00:00

Outlook tripped me up a few days ago when it sent a sensitive email to some people from a contacts group who had previously been very clearly deleted from this group. How did it happen?  This was certainly not human error!! I checked who was brought up in my updated contact group BEFORE sending the message, but later found out that many others who had previously been in the group but had been removed (several days before) were also sent the message. There was no way to check who was in the group before pressing send as the addresses cannot be shown. I have no faith in this system now.

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Contacts

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Anonymous
2013-02-19T05:38:09+00:00

I have the same problem; several of my email groups send messages to deleted members.  When I inspect the membership in People they do not show up, nor do they display if I expand the group (by clicking the plus sign) in the address boxes of a message.  When I send to the unexpanded list, it send the message to the deleted members. Having to expand the list every time I send a message is a real nuisance, not a solution.

Searching the web I found several articles about .NK2 files for the Office version of Outlook.  These files support an auto-complete feature when typing addresses.  There were some reports of phantom addresses that were due to them being retained in this address cache.  One solution was to delete the cache and let Outlook rebuild it.  Is something similar going on here?  If so, how do I reset my cache?

Directing messages to the correct recipients is pretty fundamental to a mail system. This bug needs to be acknowledged and fixed. I'm already displeased by being forced out of hotmail which I used without issues for years.  This bug is strike two and makes me a very unhappy customer.

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Anonymous
2013-07-30T07:38:22+00:00

Hi DLN2000,

Thank you for posting back.

To address your concern with the removed contacts from a gropu that are still receiving emails sent to the group where they previously belonged to, it would be better if you will create your own post for us to address the issue properly.

To address your concern with editing your group list, please be informed that the dropdown menu in the People page to view your groups has been removed and your groups have been integrated to your contacts list. You can now view your groups just by scrolling through your contacts list or by typing the group name in the search box.

If you wish to remove/add a contact to a group, just follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to your account here.
  2. Search for the group list that you want to manage by typing the group name in the search bar, pressing Enter then selecting the group list.
  3. Click Edit located in the toolbar.
  4. If you wish to remove a contact, click the X on the lower right portion of the picture to remove it from the group. On the other hand, if you wish to add a contact to the group, just type the contact name in the field under Add member then select the contact that you want to add in the list that will appear.
  5. Click Save to finish the process.

Kindly visit the thread below to know more about the changes made in Outlook.com's People page:

**How do I add a contact to an existing Group in this new Outlook?**

Hope this information helps. Let us know if you need further assistance.

Thank you.

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Anonymous
2013-02-12T14:39:25+00:00

Hi,

We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you. Kindly make sure that you have successfully removed these certain contacts in the group by signing in here.

People

Before sending an email, you can check the recipients of the it after selecting the group by clicking the plus (+) sign beside the group name.

Thanks!

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-12-05T01:34:39+00:00

    Unbelievable. I am having the same problem. Even if I delete the contact and put her in again with a new email address, her old one still appears in the group. Her name is appearing 3 times now!

    This should have been fixed years ago!

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-03-20T21:28:59+00:00

    I have exactly the same problem as described in this 2013 post. Deleting a contact does not remove the name and email address from an existing mailing list. The person no longer appears in contacts but DOES appear as a name when searched for - although clicking on the name doesn't retrieve any details.

    The only reliable solution I have found is to delete the mailing list and build from scratch - a very tedious solution. This error has occurred repeatedly and is a very serious problem (fortunately my use is for a social club so the impact is simply annoyance to me as the list owner and the people wanting to be removed from the mailing list - but for more sensitive communications this could be disastrous). I do not understand why such a fundamental error is allowed to persist in what is otherwise a very good product.

    I have tried multiple browsers/computers so the error is clearly on the server side and a Microsoft issue. Can you please provide an official acknowledgement that this is a known issue and a timeline for a fix.

    John A.

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