change name in contacts

Question

change name in contacts

Andrew Zielinski 5

I want to change the name in my outlook contacts. I followed the instructions on-line but when I try to edit, I can change everything except the name.

Is there another setting that I need to use or change?

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2 answers

Answer 1

Andrew Zielinski 5

It's just in my outlook.

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Answer 2

Arlene D 36,200 Independent Advisor

Thanks for the update. One quick question, is the contact stored in your Outlook account or synced from another service like iCloud or Google?

If the name will not edit, Outlook usually treats the contact as read-only when it comes from another source, so you need to edit the name in that service, then Outlook updates. If the contact is stored in your Microsoft 365 account, open Outlook on the web, go to People, select the contact, choose Edit, and update the Full name field. If the field stays locked, delete the contact and create a new one with the correct name.

CameronHendrickson-2161 0 Reputation points

2026-07-24T17:20:37.08+00:00

I tried deleting the contact and recreating it and it didn't work. I have two accounts. One (my original account) I can edit the name and anything else.

The new one through Microsoft 365 has the name locked (and yes, the contacts were imported from Google). So following your suggestion, I deleted one of the contacts, then created the contact from scratch. The name defaulted to the email address and is locked (won't let me edit).

It's very frustrating since I created this account and imported a very large history from Google, so I have a ton of contacts that got their name changed to their email address vs how I had them entered. There's no way I will be able to find contacts efficiently with the way Microsoft set them up.
Hornblower409 12,155 Reputation points

2026-07-25T04:39:59.2833333+00:00

@CameronHendrickson-2161 said

I tried deleting the contact and recreating it and it didn't work.

If the suggestions in this thread didn't help, I would suggest that you start a new thread using the "Ask a question" button at the top of this page to create a new Question and include the details for your specific problem. This provides much higher visibility to your issue than adding on to an old post, which is only seen by people who are already following this question.