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VB Script to Change Display Names in Outlook Contacts

I'm having some issues with the name display in Contacts within Outlook within my user community. My Exchange server is 2010 and my clients run Outlook 2003.

I would like to allow each user to run a script that would change the Default "Full Name" order to First Last, as well as the Default "File As" order to Last, First in Tools, Options, Preferences, Contact Options.

Any ideas?

David Lee

Hi, DougInOttawa.

I think you'd be better off using group policy to set this.

TheGorby

As BlueDevilFan mentioned Group policy does have this exact setting for Outlook, you'd need to download the Office ADM files to use it though.

If you do want to use a script, the 2 registry settigns you need to change are:

Within "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Contact\"

(REG_DWORD) FileAsOrder = 0x00008017 (32791)
(REG_SZ) NameParserStyle = E

DougInOttawa

ASKER

And this will change both the FileAsOrder and the DisplayAsOrder?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

TheGorby

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TheGorby

Oh and one thing I forgot to mention, for the line with the 'FileAsOrder' info, the number after the "/d" may need to be 32791 instead of 00008017.

DougInOttawa

ASKER

Thanks for the help, TheGorby. This is great for new contacts.

Is there any way to automate this same change to existing contacts?

TheGorby

That will be much tougher, since as far as I can tell it's not saved in the registry or to any editable file.

My guess is that this would only be possible using VBA (which I'm not very good with) or maybe AutoIT (which I'm very good with). I'll see if I can't figure something out with one or the other.