Contact Groups are not searchable with Autocomplete

Last Updated: December 4, 2017

ISSUE

After updating Outlook 2016 to Build 8625.2121 or higher, local contact groups do not auto-resolve with Autocomplete.

STATUS: WORKAROUND

Our engineering team is aware of this issue and working on a fix that should be available soon. In the meantime, you can try one of the following workarounds:

Workaround #1

Type the name of the contact group and then press Alt+K or Ctrl+K to resolve it. In most cases, you can type a portion of the group name and then press Alt+K or Ctrl+K to resolve it.

Workaround #2

Revert the Office 2016 Click-to-Run installation to Build 8431.2107. To do this:

1. Exit all Office applications.

2. Click Start, type cmd in the Search box, right-click Command Prompt (or cmd.exe), and then click Run as administrator.

3. In the command prompt dialog window, type the following two command lines, pressing Enter after each command line:

   • cd %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun

   • officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.8431.2107

4. When the repair dialog box appears, choose Online Repair.

5. Click Repair, and then click Repair again.

6. When the repair is done, open Outlook and click File > Office Account.

7. Click Update Options and choose Disable Updates.

   : To prevent the version of Office that caused the problem to be re-installed you'll need to temporarily disable automatic updates.

8. Set a reminder to check this article in the future for a resolution. Once you've seen that the issue has been fixed, please make sure to re-enable automatic updates in Office again.

If Build 8431.2107 is not available when you try this workaround, see this article for other versions you can revert to: Version and build numbers of update channel releases.