Outlook 2016 Auto-Complete for Contact Groups Not Working

Anonymous
2017-10-22T23:34:21+00:00

Split from this thread.

Thanks to both of you for your replies and the information about how auto-complete works.  I understand the feature better now.  So it looks like even if I send an email to a group, auto-complete does not remember the group for a subsequent email.  Auto-complete works fine for individual addresses, just not for groups.

We are using Office 365 Pro Plus Version 1707, Build 8326.2073.  Someone else here using 365 (V1707, slightly later Build) does not have this issue with auto-complete remembering groups.  This is not a huge problem (costs me an extra click), but it's odd that this used to work and now it does not.  The same time that group auto-complete stopped working, the order of my address books also changed - moving my local contacts below the global contact list.  This may be completely unrelated, though.

If you have any other ideas about what may be causing group auto-complete to not work on my PC, I would appreciate those.  Otherwise, thank you again for your responses - and the auto-complete education!

Paul

Hi there,

I have this issue as well.  Autocomplete DID work with distribution lists in Outlook 2010.  So this is another handy feature that Microsoft has removed in 2016/365?

Thank you!

Connie

Office 365 ProPlus Version 1700, Build 8431.2079

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For home

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2017-11-14T03:13:13+00:00

Hi All,

I want to inform you that we are definitely looking into this issue. It is currently being investigated, and we will update you as soon as we have a possible resolution for this issue. For now, you can pick up the local contact group from the address book or roll back to the earlier version via https://support.microsoft.com/en-sg/help/2770432/how-to-revert-to-an-earlier-version-of-office-2013-or-office-2016-clic

I apologize for any inconvenience caused by this issue, and do appreciate your patience and understanding.

Best Regards,

Erick

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-12-01T00:28:59+00:00

    I have been using Office 365 for some time.  Why should I need to go back to Office 2013 or Office 2016 to get a fix? Not having auto-complete for distribution lists is quite a nuisance for me!

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-30T19:42:49+00:00

    Neither the Group auto-complete nor the individual auto-complete is working.  I followed the instructions in Help, with the result that all my contacts that are not in my address book have now disappeared - this is a disaster!  What do I do now?

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-11-16T23:43:49+00:00

    My IT administrator figured that out too. But this beats the purpose of recent people AKA (Auto-Complete) because you have to remember the name of the group, type it in case sensitive, hit the Tab key and wait for it to appear.

    In that much time , I might as well select 3 groups from address book ,send out the E-mails and be done. Computers are not meant to do memory checks. It's like going back to DOS days trying to remember DOS commands for each action.

    Outlook developers need to bring it back , the way it worked in  Version 1707, I don't remember the build until it stopped working.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-11-13T04:26:58+00:00

    I have the same problem. Outlook's Autocomplete works fine for contacts but not for groups. If I manually find the group and add it to the distribution, subsequent emails still won't autocomplete.

    My Office 365 is Version 1710 (Build 8625.2121) and Windows 10 pro is Version 1703 (Builld 15063.674). Both are the latest. At least two computers fail the same.

    I believe group Autocomplete failure began with one of these updates or possibly a previous build.

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