Understanding Outlook E-mail Display Formats

I got an interesting question from a reader of the CEI blog today.  He had just installed Microsoft CRM for Outlook 4.0, and after synchronizing, all of the synched contacts in Outlook had the e-mail address display type set to the name and e-mail address.

For example, Joe Blow’s email address is displayed as Joe Blow (joe.blow@company.com).

This behavior is due to how Outlook handles multiple e-mail addresses.  If a contact only have one e-mail address, it shows just the email address.  However, if a contact has multiple e-mail addresses, it displays the contact name and the email address.

This post from Outlook Power Magazine has some good information about e-mail display types.

There is no way that I’m aware of to change the default behavior, you basically have to edit each contact’s email addresses after they are created, and if something changes (such as the name of the contact), it will be set back to the default format.

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