Editing Outlook's AutoComplete Email Address List

The folks at Nirsoft have another great free program that you can put to use to help solve everyday problems in the office. NK2Edit can be used to review and edit the file (with the extension .nk2) that Outlook uses to store email addresses that will be automatically entered when a user enters the first few letters of a person's name or email address. Given how central email is to conducting work in a law office, or any office, this little tech feature must be one of the most noticeable and widely used tools around. An attorney you're working for may know nothing about macros for Outlook, or the advanced searched tools available in the Exchange server but she or he has surely noticed the email address autofill feature, and likely occasionally been stymied by it.

Download Nirsoft's NK2Edit application here, and use it to:

1. Add new email addresses to the autofill list, either individually or by scanning sent or received emails - see the icons on the upper tool bar with plus signs.

2. Change how addresses already in the list appear, by simply right clicking on any one entry in the Table mode and choosing Properties.

3. Change the order in which names appear as the user types in letters. In order to do this, you just need to change the 'weight' assigned to anyone email address. See the column circled in red in the screen grab below, which shows the weight.

The higher an address's weight, the higher its order in the autofill list. However in order to edit the assigned weights you need to run a script from Windows command prompt. In a text file, enter a script in this format:

if EmailString Contain "@edrm.net" set weight 1000000

. . . you can use any high number in place of 1,000,000. Then save this file as a text file on your C drive, in a folder you can make easy reference to. Go back to the folder in which you saved the NK2Edit executable files, press CTRL + SHIFT, and RIGHT CLICK, and then enter this in the command prompt:

NK2Edit.exe /script "c:\hello\myscript.txt" "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\RoamCache\Stream_Autocomplete_0_FBF73DA0129ACD42A241F953CDBE1222.dat"

The last reference is to a .dat file which Outlook 2016 apparently uses in place of an .nk2 file, but if you are using an earlier version of Outlook this path should lead to the .nk2 file itself.

4. Import a list of new addresses from a .csv file - see Action . . . Add Records From Simple csv File

5. Change the maximum number of addresses that can be added to the list. Go to the Help menu and select Set Outlook AutoComplete Limit.

Be sure to back-up the .nk2 file before beginning to edit it, and save your changes before exiting the application.