How to recover a deleted contact from the autocomplete list?

Question

Hi All,

My dad and I experienced the same issue with two different Outlook accounts (his is a personal account via Outlook.exe, mine is a work one via Outlook 365 desktop app). We deleted a contact in Outlook from the auto-complete list by accidentally hitting the "Delete" keyboard key, and it is impossible to recover it.

What we tried:

• De-activate then re-activate the auto-complete list in Outlook's options
• Cleared the auto-complete list in Outlook's options
• Renamed the cache folder as "old_RoamCache" for Outlook to create a new one
• Sent e-mails to the deleted contact
• Added the deleted contact to the personal contacts list in Outlook
• Starting to write the contact e-mail address and hitting CTRL+K to open the address book and select the contact in the list
• Tried to find the deleted contact in the deleted e-mails folder (including using the "recover deleted items" option)

Any solution? Or is this a fail from Outlook altogether?

Many thanks for your help,

Phil.

Answer 1

Hi @PhilK

For our better research, please provide more information about this case:

What is your account type?

Can't you recover the others if delete them?

How do you deleted the autocomplete list? If this is the deletion method shown in the following figure, it won't prompt. If you want to unhide the contact, send an email to the contact by replying to the old message or typing the full email address in the new message. After about 24 hours, the contact is unhidden from the list of suggestions. More information, see: Manage suggested recipients in the To, Cc, and Bcc boxes with Auto-Complete - Microsoft Support.

Additionally, you can try the following methods to clear the AutoComplete list:

1. Select Start, and then select Run.
2. Type Outlook.exe /CleanAutoCompleteCache.

Note: If Outlook is not installed in the default location, you must point to the path of Outlook.exe.

For more details, you could refer to: The Outlook AutoComplete list - Outlook | Microsoft Learn.

Hope this helps!

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Answer 2

Solved after waiting 24 hours. Contact has reappeared in the auto-complete list in both situations. Thank you.

Answer 3

This feature is so painfully dumb.