My "All Contacts" list in New Outlook will not display

Question

My "All Contacts" list in New Outlook will not display. Everything else in New Outlook is working OK.

Answer 1

Hi Karl King,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Please review and try the steps suggested by Q&A Assist above first (especially going to People >All contacts and changing the Sort/Filter to refresh the list).

After completing these steps, please feel free to let me know if the issue is resolved or not. Thank you so much.

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Answer 2

Follow these steps to troubleshoot the “All contacts” list not displaying in New Outlook for Windows:

1. Confirm using New Outlook
   • In Outlook, check the toggle in the upper-right corner. If New Outlook is enabled but the People/Contacts behavior seems wrong, continue with the steps below.
2. Open the People view correctly
   • On the navigation bar in New Outlook, select People.
   • Make sure All contacts is selected in the left pane. If another filter is selected, the list may appear empty.
3. Change the sort/filter to refresh the list
   • With All contacts selected, click the filter option at the top of the list (it may show something like By first name).
   • Under Sort by, choose a different option (for example, switch from By first name to By last name or Recently added).
   • This forces the list to refresh and can surface contacts that were not appearing under the previous sort/filter.
4. Check that contacts actually exist
   • If contacts were recently imported and nothing appears, verify the source file:
     • Locate the exported .csv file.
     • Open it in Excel and confirm that contact data is present.
     • If the file is empty, re‑export from the source system (for example, choose All contacts when exporting from Google), save as CSV, then re‑import into Outlook and check again.
5. If People view is still blank
   • Close Outlook.
   • Restart Outlook and re-open People → All contacts.
   • If the issue persists only in New Outlook but not in Classic Outlook, use Classic Outlook temporarily to manage contacts while waiting for client updates.

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References:

• Manage contacts in Outlook
• No contacts appear in Outlook after import