I have a few questions about MS outlook frequent contacts.

First when a user sends an email and they never have sent that person an email they look it up in the address book, and the next time they send them an email all they have to do is type a few letters of their name and it will show up in the 'To' field. How do we delete emails from that list? I've gone in the Frequent contacts list, but that email address is not there.

I ALSO have a user that wants to share her frequent contacts (dont ask why, i'm not sure), but I cant seem to find a way to browse to that folder on the other machine. I've given the other user permission by right clicking and going to sharing then adding their name to the list and giving them owner rights (just to test), but when they try to connect they connect to the contacts and not frequent contacts.

All computers are running XP SP2 and we have an exchange server running. Any thoughts?I dont recall this happening in Outlook, what version of Outlook are you using? Express, Office, 5.5, 6.0, the one that came with Vista, Live Mail (BETA)?

As I recall, you must have a contact in your address book to see their name appear as you type a new email.
Delete the contact from your address book, if you dont want them there.

You might also try (since Outlook is related to Internet Explorer, cousins) going to:
Start> Control Panel> "Internet Options"
Find "Content", and click "Autocomplete"
Disable auto-completion of "forms"

This may disable autocompletion on the To: field in email
We are using Office 2003. We actually just converted from Groupwise and we did it in stages so some PEOPLE were on groupwise and others were using exchange. Well some users still have the old groupwise email address when they type in a few letters of their name, but that email address is not in their address book. I'm kinda confused on what this frequent contact list actually does. Does the autocomplete option in IE store the email addresses? I will try that option tomorrow when i GET in. Since IE and Outlook are "related", in a sense, its possible that that is why they are being stored.

It might be worth TRYING, since it could tie into the autocomplete system, if you still want to autocomplete, and you just dont want the old addresses, try clearing the form history... Didnt work, i cleared it, and even turned it off. Restarted IE and outlook, but nothing. Couldnt find anything on google about this either. On my first Google search, I found this:
http://ask-leo.com/where_do_outlooks_autocomplete_suggestions_come_from.html

If the CTRL+K Suggestion doesn't work, try resetting the database.

Quote

The nickname list is something the Outlook builds over time as you send and receive email. Essentially it collects all the email addresses that you've sent email to as they've appeared in the To, Cc or Bcc fields. That's Outlook's first source of autocomplete suggestions.

Outlook also appears to sometimes take suggestions from your address book. It's unclear exactly when it decides to, or rather when it decides not to. It might be related to how many suggestions it was able to find in the nickname list. Regardless, what's important is that entries in your address book are not always presented.

It's frustrating to type the first few characters of someone's name knowing that they're in your address book, but they don't show.

There is a solution.

Press CTRL+K.

Ctrl+K is a shortcut for the "Check Names" button, also on the toolbar when you're composing a message. Check names will look at the characters you've typed so far and compare them to your address book entries. If there's only one match it completes the entry. If there's more than one match then it presents a list for you to choose from. And the list will not include items from the nickname list. But the name you just entered will get added to the nickname list so the next time you use it, it should be there.

Personally, I think it's more confusing that it needs to be. But there it is.

By the way, deleting an address from the nickname list is also very easy: when you see it being suggested use the up or down arrow keys to highlight it, and then press delete.

The nickname list that outlook maintains can occasionally become corrupt. To repair it or to reset it completely Microsoft has provided this knowledgebase article.

Keith seems to be right.

It happens with nearly all versions of Outlook, you simply send a mail to any person, and the next time you type the initials they come up.

Regardless whether they are stored in the address book or not.

Most probably it caches it somewhere, dunno where