Setting your default Address Book

A frustrating trait of Outlook is that it sometimes selects the wrong person from the wrong address book. In a networked environment, Outlook will check the global address list first when looking up a name. That's the internal list of your organization. But if you're more apt to e-mail people outside the organization, you might consider changing the default to your personal address book instead. Let me show you how. To make this simple change, we need to pull up the Outlook Address Book. We can either click on this icon from the Home Tab in the Ribbon, or use the shortcut key, Ctrl+Shift+B. From the Address Book window, let's choose Tools and then Options.

Here we can specify which list Outlook should check first when we enter someone's name. I can choose the Global Address List, my personal list, or a custom order. Note that down below, I can also specify which list to open first whenever I open an address book. This includes what you see when you click the To button while composing an e-mail. These two little settings can save a lot of time switching between address books, but they are only useful if most of your contacts are outside the organization. Want more tips about addressing e-mails? Check out chapter 3. But for now, let's move on the tip number six.