Losing Categories from Contacts

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ybenamou

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Hello,




I work for a non profit with 6-10 computers, all running the same mailbox (thru an exchange server) with about 6000 contacts. we have them separated by categories. at least twice a month now, random contacts will randomly lose some (sometimes all) their categories. it seems to be completely indiscriminate. its a real pain because were constantly putting in data, and then losing it!




all computers run windows 7, office 2007, anti-virus, firewall, and are hard wired to the internet. help!!




thanks,
 
I have a similar problem. After recently updating Exchange and Outlook to 2010, random contacts loose their category associations. We have approximately 2,000 contacts, all sorted with multiple categories. Several hundred contacts loose all category tags. After spending considerable time rebuilding our contact lists, a week later we discover another random assortment of contacts have lost their category tags. Anyone find a solution?
 
Is the category removed from the contact or do you just lose the color? Open the contact and go to Categorize, All Categories and see if the categories are listed with (not in master list) following the name.

Do you sync contacts with something- a smartphone or pd a etc.
 
Any progress on this topic? I have a user who lost the association of categories to several hundred contacts. The categories are still there and still associated with other contacts. The contacts are still there but where they should be associated with multiple categories there are none. User has an iPhone and an iPad. I don't know about Hotmail.
 
I am really glad I am not the only person having this problem! Today I discovered a whole lot of all my category allocations had been lost again (for about the third time). I wish I knew the solution (no I have not synchronised with anything). I do know a way you can recover from it though. Create a new folder under Contacts called eg Backup. After you have all the categories set the way you want under the main contacts folder, copy them all to this backup folder.

Next time you lose the categorisation, simply copy them all back (complete with categorisation) and select the option to update.

But I would be really glad if someone could tell me how to stop it happening in the first place!
 
We may have figured out part of the issue. If someone plugs in the Iphone to Itunes and syncs their mail contacts and calendar. It messes up everything. Since Active sync is also doing this they end up with duplicates and lose some of their settings such as categories. Diane Does this sound about right?
 
It definitely makes sense for duplicates (or missing contacts and appointments). I can't be 100% sure that it would affect categories. Can you disable calendar and contact syncing via itunes? It is best to sync over the air when the account supports it.
 
Ok I check the settings on my Iphone 4 and the users Iphone 4 and Ipad and do not have anything checked to sync.
 
I am also losing categories withing my Outlook 2010 Contacts. Not just the colors, either.

This happened when I created a new category and added some people to it. Anyone I

added to the new categoty were removed from any of the other categories they were in.
The contact remains, but is in only the new category I added to them.

This is a POP Outlook setup with One-Way Synch (Outlook to Blackberry, but not the other way). Any ideas?
 
Diane Poremsky said:
How are you adding them to the contact - what screen or meu are you using to select the category?
Click to expand...

I go to Contacts, open up the contact I want to modify. I then click the "Categorize" dropown and click the box I of the Category I want to add.

At this point there might be one or two others already selected. I then save the contact then close it.
 
I read somewhere about not using the quick default Category capability.

Even though I do not use it there was still an entry in the option. So I told in none

Could this have screwed things up? I'm not even sure how to use it...
 
Quick Click usually isn't the problem - if you only have one category, it shouldn't remove it. I do recommend setting your most frequently used category as the default - it just makes sense.

Dragging between categories will replace categories rather than add more and dragging to none removes them - but that is usualyl hard to do accidently (but not impossible). Easier is to right click and hit clear accidently - but someone needs logged on somewhere to do that.
 
Have the exact problem with an Exec's contacts. Large chunks of them are being stripped of the category they were in for no reason.

Outlook 2007, iPad ios 5.0.1, Exchange 2010, iPad 2

I think I made a recent discovery though.

I created a contact via the iPad. Once it was in my contacts within Outlook, I categorized it. I then went back to the iPad and touched mail so activesynch would kick in.

I stared at my contacts and the contact I created had its category stripped away. The contact was still there, just with no category.

However, I haven't been able to duplicate it since then and I swear I'm doing it the same way.

I worked with Microsoft over the last few days, and briefly spoke with Apple. They both point fingers at each other lol.

Me, I think the problem is something with how iOS handles the category field. iOS doesn't pull it so it would make sense that if you create a contact using iOS it doesn't know how to handle a category added by outlook.

What makes ZERO sense is why this is happening to large chunks of contacts? I'm talking hundreds at a time, and these are NOT contacts created on the iPad. The existing contacts are olllllllllld and have been in his mailbox store for quite some time.
 
i haven't noticed problems - and i would because i also sync with blackberry and filter on the BB to show only contacts in the BB category. But, i don't really use the contacts on my ipad (except to test things like this) - maybe they don't get messed up because i don't use them?

I'll see if i can repro.
 
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