If you had a valid backup of your Outlook data file, you could simply open
it and retrieve your Contacts form the Contacts Folder--precisely the way
Brian told you. What you have instead only you could know. You created your
backup.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"Daryl Rose" wrote in message
...
"Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
Ourlook doesn't use an address book. The feature titled "Address Book"
is a
view of your Contacts folder(s). Are you saying your Contacts folder is
empty?

No, the contacts were not deleted, only the email addresses withing the
contacts.

How do you make those backups? If you copy your PST (the correct way to
make
a backup), then open the most recent with FIleOpenOutlook Data File.
Your
contacts will be in that PSTs Contacts folder.

I use Vista, so I use the built in backup & restore program within Vista.
The last backup I made was over a week ago, and I don't want to restore
the
outlook.pst file, because I've made several calendar updates, emails,
etc...
since then.

I'll try to explain in a little more detail what happened.

When creating emails and entering addresses on the To line, I was getting
a
lot of old email address popping up. (Contacts had changed email address,
but the old one would pop up, not the newest one.) I figured those were
cached somewhere and needed to be cleaned out. In my research, I seen a
lot
of contacts in the "Address Book", and several of them where the old
address.
I figured this is where those address where being cached and decided to
clean them out so they would be gone forever. I didn't realize that by
deleting them I would also delete the email address from the actual
contacts.
I assumed that this was just a "view" of the actual contacts, not actually
tied to the contacts.

When I open the Outlook data file as you suggest I only see Archive.pst &
Outlook.pst, nothing labeled Contacts. If I try to open Outlook.pst I get
an
error (I assume because I already have Outlook open).

If I could just recover the Contacts only, I think that I would be fine.
Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

Daryl