Application Note
Using Shared Contact Folders in Outlook

Do you need to use the same contact information on two or more PCs (i.e. home and office)?
Do you need to share a contact list with others in your office?
Do you want users to maintain their own areas of a shared contact list?

This feature is available to Exchange users, but Microsoft Outlook 98 and 2000 also allows you to share any contact folder with one or more Outlook users. You may also share a contact folder between your home and office PCs if both are running Outlook.

NOTE: This feature is not available in Outlook 2002 or later.

The person setting up the sharing also sets the permissions for each individual who is sharing the folder. Permissions can range from read-only to full read and write.

Since all synchronization is done through email, the other users can be anywhere in the world.

But what if you want to want to separate your contacts from those handled by someone else? You can still keep all the contacts in a single folder, but use categories in the shared folder to identify who is prime for the various contacts within the category.

With the appropriate access privileges, each person can then use GoodContacts to maintain their own contacts, but everyone with access to the folder can see the latest information.

NOTE: If you are using an Outlook version that does not support sharing, or are using multiple databases for your contact data, the GoodContacts Synchronizer may provide an alternate solution.

Sharing Outlook Contact Folders

The following steps show you how to set up an Outlook contact folder for sharing with one or more Outlook users. Once sharing is established, synchronization between users occurs automatically in the background. Within minutes, a change made by one person appears in the corresponding folder of all other members.

1.	Open Outlook and select the contact folder you want to share.
2.	Click the File menu at the top-left of the Outlook window, and select: Share > This Folder This opens the Sharing Wizard that leads you through the steps for sharing the folder you selected in the previous step.
3.	In the Net Folder Wizard, click the Add button to add a new user. The user must be a member of your contact list, but not necessarily the list you are sharing.


4.	From the contact list, select the name of the person who will be sharing this folder.
5.	To set up sharing permissions for this person, click the Permissions button on the Net Folder Wizard.
6.	In the Permissions form, select the permission level you want to grant to this user.

	Note: If the person is running GoodContacts to maintain all or part of the contact list, be sure to grant this person either Author or Editor permissions. After setting the permissions, click OK on the Permissions page. You may repeat the steps above to add another user, or click Next on the Net Folder Wizard page to complete the setup.
7.	Add a descriptive name for this folder in the Wizard and click Next. This is the name other users will see when they are invited to share the folder.

8.	When you click Next, an invitation is sent to each person in the member list asking them to share this folder. If they accept the invitation, Outlook synchronizes the folders in the background. The initial synchronization may take several hours.

Using GoodContacts with Shared Folders

When using GoodContacts to verify contacts in shared folders, make sure that the person running the verification mailing:

has write access to the names in the folder that are included in the mailing
is the person receiving the responses
is receiving the responses on the same PC that ran the original mailing

This ensures that GoodContacts can process the responses and update the contact list.

Outlook 2002 and 2003 do not allow shared folders, but there are other methods for achieving the same results. Some third-party add-ins are available that allow folder sharing. For suggestions, see the following web site: www.slipstick.com

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Application Note Using Shared Contact Folders in Outlook

Sharing Outlook Contact Folders

Using GoodContacts with Shared Folders

Application Note
Using Shared Contact Folders in Outlook