Offline Address Book

Overview

This article provides an explanation of the Offline Address Book (OAB) in Outlook and how to manually download and update it in Outlook.

What is the Offline Address Book?

The Offline Address Book (OAB) contains the properties of a user - such as email address - that Microsoft Outlook requires to send an email message and display information about the user. By using the Offline Address Book, Outlook does not have to connect to Exchange to resolve names or open the records for each user. This reduces network traffic and improves performance.

We recommend that you download the full details of the Offline Address Book. This makes the address book information available where there is no network connectivity or is suffering from poor performance.

Downloading the Offline Address Book

If Outlook is left running in Cached Exchange Mode, it will tend to automatically update the Offline Address Book once a day. The frequency of updates does depend on Address Book updates on the Exchange server.

You may manually initiate these updates as follows:

Outlook 2007

1. Go to Tools > Send/Receive and then click on Download Address Book
2. Under Information to download, select Full Details or No Details
3. Click on OK

Outlook 2010 & Outlook 2013

1. In Outlook, go to Send/Receive
2. Select Send/Receive Groups (accessible via the down-arrow)
3. Select Download Address Book
4. Untick Download changes since last Send/Receive
5. Click on OK

Notes & Considerations

In an Exchange environment, any changes to contacts, permissions or distributions may potentially take upto 72 hours to complete the process of updating the Offline Address Book. During this time, contacts may need to be manually added until they appear in the OAB.