Friday, January 6, 2012

Add Global Address List (GAL) to Contacts in Outlook 2010

I had been trying to find a way to add all of my Contacts, Groups, etc. from our company's Global Address List (GAL) to my local Outlook Contacts. That way, whenever I would need to send an email it would be easy to resolve/add everyone's name in the "To:" line. I finally achieved this by completing the following steps:

1. Open Outlook 2010.
2. Click "New" to open a new email.
3. Click "Address Book".
4. Select "Global Address List" in the dropdown list under the Address Book heading.
5. Click the first entry and hold down the Shift button.
6. Scroll to the bottom of your GAL and select the last entry.
7. Finally, right-click anywhere in the entries list and select "Add to Contacts". Depending on the number of Contacts in your GAL, this may take a minute or two.

Then, you're all set. The GAL has been added to your Contacts in Outlook. You can now easily begin typing a person's name, group, whatever and you will be able to quickly add exactly who you need to the email. Enjoy!

17 comments:

  1. I really did it. Thanks so much, I had enjoy it. Thank you so much.


    htb.thao@hotmail.com

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    Replies
    1. You're very welcome! Glad I could help!

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    2. Hi, Great.. Tutorial is just awesome..It is really helpful for a newbie like me.. I am a regular follower of your blog. Really very informative post you shared here. Kindly keep blogging. If anyone wants to become a Front end developer learn from Javascript Training in Chennai .

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  2. Thank you! Very easy to follow and helped me a lot.

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  3. Hi Wikky.

    Thanks for that. Now, do you know how to do the reverse - i.e Add contacts to you Global Address List? Your instructions above do not work.

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    Replies
    1. I believe this pertains to Active Directory accounts which either you or your system administrator will need to create in order to make them accessible through Outlook.

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  4. In the Address Book drop-down menu, my options are "Outlook Address Book" and "Contacts." No "Global Address List." Now what? :(

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  5. Are you using Oulook 2010? You should click New for a new email and then click the "To:" button. From this window, you should see a dropdown to select the GAL

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  6. This will only work for the current GAL, what happens when more users are added, or users are removed?

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    1. My worry too, I've a lot of uses asking for this functionality but I am hesitant to point them in this direction as when changes are made they'll have to repeat the process.

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    2. You are correct. This essentially only does a "one time" export from the GAL. Any additions/removals would require a repeat of the steps. This solution is really to just get you a near full export of all users so that you don't always have to go searching.

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  7. One of the real benefits of this is that it will copy contacts to your smartphone so you will knoe who is calling you from work as all numbers will be in your contacts.

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  8. hey helped me a lot... was wondering since many months... thank you

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  9. Does anyone know how to do this when there are 50 000 contacts. If I scroll more than say 'n 100 lines and do the shift click thing I get an error. Definitely don't want to repeat the process 500 times.

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  10. Hi,

    Can we do this from Exchange server console 2010. ?
    I want to move my GAL to outlook contacts automatically for some of my HOD's

    Thanks,
    Zaman

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