adding contacts in Outlook 2016

Question

How do I add a contact from an email in Outlook 2016? Let's say I have received an email from someone who is not yet in my contact list, and I want to add this person.  I click on the email address, and a little card comes up, with the email address already entered in the field for the person's name. I can erase and overwrite the name, which is annoying, but the rest of the card appears to be completely non-functional. 

There are categories below the name for email, phone no., address, birthday, with the option to add more fields for each category. However, the email field is blank, and I cannot copy and paste the actual email address into the email field. I can add more email fields, but no way to enter any data into them.

Yes, I can switch to People view and enter all the information I want, manually. But why is there no quick way to add a contact from the email view, especially since the framework for doing so is already in place? I must have been spoiled by my BlackBerry, which makes adding contacts a breeze, with the relevant information already entered into the correct fields.

Another strange behaviour: if I click on an email address of someone who is already in my contacts, the exact same thing happens. The same little card comes up, with all blank fields under each category, and no way to enter information into any of them. If I click on the three dots to the right of the Add button, I get the option to link the "new" contact with existing ones, but the existing contact doesn't show up! It seems like this feature is completely broken, and since I have no experience with previous versions of Outlook, I don't know if it ever worked. Seems like the most basic feature of an email/contacts client .

This problem exists on my Surface Pro 4, running Win10 Pro, and on my desktop computer, running Win10 Home. I have a 5-device license for Office 365, so the software physically resides on my devices.

Answer 1

Thanks Alan,

I notice that you're using 8.1. Maybe it's a Win10 issue, but I do NOT get the text entry box in the email field of the contact card, shown in the bottom left portion of your first screenshot. That's why I think that the software is faulty. Please try it with Win10 and see if the text entry box shows up for email, or any of the other categories. For me, none allows data entry.

As you can see in the second screenshot, there is no text entry box for email. I can't even get the cursor to move away from the name field.

Answer 2

I am having the same problem with Outlook 2016 on Windows 7 PC.  In older versions of outlook when you right click on an email address in an email message, it gave you the option of "Add to Outlook Contacts" or "Look up Outlook Contact".  The look up feature no longer appears, and the Add feature appears to be broken.  When I select Add, the email address in the new contact is not populated, and if I manually populate the fields and save, the program still does not link the new conact to the address.  I still cannot lookup that contact by right clicking the email address.  Obviously Microsoft has broken this basic feature in the latest version and its tech support people are not testing all the install use cases.  How am I not surprised.  Get your act together Microsoft.  Do you really want everyone to switch to Google Docs?

Answer 3

Forgot to mention in my reply - in the second screenshot, I had already edited the name of the Microsoft Community contact by removing the email address.

If I try the same exercise with an existing contact, I do not get the option to edit the contact, as it's not recognised. The exact same card pops up, with the name and email address showing up in the name field and no other information visible or enterable.

I cannot believe that if this is normal functionality for this version of Outlook, others haven't had this problem, but I haven't found anything similar in the forums. It's not a deal breaker for me because I can use my phone to add contacts, but I thought it might be easier with Outlook, especially if I'm adding an email to an existing contact for whom I have just a phone number.

Answer 4

Hi Alla,

Thanks for your detailed information.

According to your description, I have also run a test and found that

1.    I can add a sender who is not in my contact list into my Outlook contacts.

2.    I can view the sender who has been my contact with the existing contact information.

I’d like to state my test with more details. OS: Windows 8.1. Outlook 2016 version: 16.0.6741.2048.

1.    When a sender sent an email to me, I received it and I could right click the email address. It popped up with “add to Outlook contacts”. Then I clicked it and it popped out the detailed contact information card (including the email address, phone No., Address and so on). Then the new contact could be saved via clicking “Save”. See the following pictures:

2.    When a sender who has been a contact of mine sent to me, I received it and right clicked the email address. It popped up with “edit contact”. I can view the existing contact information if I clicked “edit contact”. See the following picture:

So, I’d like to suggest you add the new Outlook contact in the email via the above method. If the issue persists, please confirm the following information for checking:

1.    What is your detailed Outlook 2016 version? Click “FILE”> “Office Accounts”.

2.    Does the issue persist with any other user in your organization?

3.    Upload 2 screenshots of right clicking the email address. One is about the sender who isn’t your contact and the other is about the sender who has been your contact. To upload a screenshot:

Regards,

Alan