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

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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
    2017-11-16T23:43:49+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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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-17T01:30:46+00:00

    I tried this too. I have two groups; "JS Committee" and "JS Other." In a new email I just typed "js" and clicked out of the box. After about 8 seconds the "js" had a squiggly red underline indicating more than one match. Right clicking it, it showed both groups and I can select the one I want. There's a + in front indicating it's a group and about 5 extra spaces after it. Note that it ignored case and didn't require the full name to be entered; the same behavior as always.

    So the problem seems to be that autocomplete is very slow but does work.

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