Microsoft Outlook Auto Complete: location, backup

Ever typed an email in Microsoft Outlook and went to put in the recipient and you were delighted to see that after you typed a few letters it had already guessed the right person?

Cool, ever reinstalled an OS or Office and went to do the same thing and Outlook did not finish your thoughts for you? Crap! Were you depending on the auto complete?

First off don’t do that!

Working in an IT office I have had a few calls from people asking why Outlook isn’t auto completing their To: field and they have lost the contact. They were actually using the auto complete function as a contact list!

Things can happen: re-installs, crashes, etc. So relying on the auto complete is a bad idea but if you would like to back up your auto complete data you are in luck.

The auto complete data is stored in a file with the extension of nk2 and can be found in the following locations:

Windows Vista:

drive:\Users\your_username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

Windows XP:

drive:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Your .nk2 file will be named the same as your Outlook profile. By default it will probably be called outlook.nk2

Copy this file and save it into a safe location for use later. I suggest an external drive.

Now if you ever need to transfer this file to another install of Outlook you know where to look. Just copy and paste it into the directories listed above.