Global Address List Not Showing in Outlook

We’ve had reports from users who are using Outlook QuickSteps and find that when they look for a contact within the QuickStep they are not shown the Global Address Book. Instead what they see is the Personal Address Book. The reason for this is the registry key HKLM\Software\Clients\Mail\(Default) not being set to Microsoft Outlook.  In order to test this out we’ve set this to Lotus Notes.  Let’s move on to reproduce the problem.  Within Outlook click on the To Manager QuickStep and the following screen should be shown

Now when you click on the To button you see the following screen

Hmm as you can see this doesn’t look like the normal Global Address List and is in fact the Personal Address Book.  Click Cancel on these two dialogs to get back to Outlook itself.  Now let’s change HKLM\Software\Clients\Mail\(Default) to Microsoft Outlook.  Repeat the above process (To Manager QuickStep and click To) and sure enough now you see the Global Address List as expected.

This problem happens often where a company has been migrated to Outlook from another email platform such as Domino.  Note that the default mail client settings within Outlook, or answering Yes if Outlook asks if it should be the default mail client often doesn’t set this value due to UAC.  So if you have any problems seeing the Global Address List then make sure the registry key is set to Microsoft Outlook.