Outlook Contacts and Exchange 2007

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Hi all. I had a little incident a short time ago that someone reset their mobile phone and therefore deleted all their contacts that were synchronised with their exchange email account. This had the effect that all the contacts were then deleted in their Outlook address book.

I went to the backup image (Symantec Backup Exec System Restore) and found that although it backs up the whole exchange server there were no contacts in the mailbox of this person. Now, I may have this @rse about, but to me this is logical as the contacts are in the local outlook address book and not in the global address lists and therefore are not part of the mailbox even though they get synchronised.

So far I haven't found much information to support this one way or the other. Am I right in thinking that if the contacts get deleted from one place or the other there is no way to restore them from a backup unless the users have made a backup for themselves? Also, if I'm wrong, which backup system would allow the restore of deleted contacts such as in this case?

Thanks

 

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We use DPM 2010 for backups and I've successfully recovered deleted contacts in the past.

Not sure how contacts were stored in your case, but ours are definately stored on Exchange. I guess if they were stored locally and there is no backup of the machine (or phone) then they're gone.

 

I think you mean that the users local NK2 file has been deleted, these are not contacts just auto complete for email address.

This is by design and is not supported by MS.

Any contacts entered into the Contact Part in Outlook 2003/2007/2010 are automatically updated to Exchange 2003/2007/2010.

It is only Exchange 2010 that replicates the NK2 file to the users contacts in there Mailbox.

 

Contacts you create in Outlook should be synced back to your Exchange server. A simple contact I make in Outlook shows up in my webmail account (just to give an example) and also gets synchronized to my other laptop as well as my phone (which I can sync to get the new contacts, even if the machine on which I "made" the contact is not turned on and my phone synchornizes over an Edge/3G network).

The autofield that Craigie mentions is an entirely different kettle of fish. Definitely not synced.

 

Exactly what I wanted to hear.

This is exactly how it works but as I was looking through the backup of his mailbox and there were no contacts to be found I thought I had it all wrong and therefore started thinking that the contacts were only locally stored but replicated too, just not part of the mailbox.

No mate, they were all synched with exchange. I've done it myself too. I deleted all the contacts on my phone one evening and then the next day when I logged on there were no more contacts in my outlook. The most recent changes were synchronised with exchange, in this case, deletion. Gave myself a facepalm when I realised what I had done.


The question still remains though, why can't I see them in the backups?

 

Mate, do me a favour and check the size of the users Mailbox in Exchange 2007 and then the size of there Mailbox in Outlook.

I'm guessing that everything is being stored in a Local PST.

 

I Was wondering, did you every get to the bottom of this issue? I am having a similar issue with contacts with Symantec Backup Exec and Exchange 2010