Unable to edit or delete a contact in office online.

Question

Unable to edit or delete a contact in office online.

Bob Christian 0

I have a contact that is associated with an email address that I am unable to edit or delete in Office online.

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Answer 1

Victor1-V 12,935 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi Bob Christian,

I understand that you cannot edit or delete a contact in Outlook online. Please note that this is a user-to-user forum, so contributors cannot access your account or contact list.

To narrow this down, could you confirm the following?

Are you signing in with a personal Outlook.com account, or a work or school account?
In People, are the Edit contact and Delete options missing, or do they appear but nothing happens or the contact returns?
Is the entry listed under Your contacts/All contacts, or does it appear only when you search or enter the address in a new message?

For a saved Outlook.com contact, open People, select the contact, and use Edit contact or Delete on the toolbar. If those options are unavailable, the entry may come from another contact source rather than being a manually saved Outlook.com contact. See Add, find, edit, or delete a contact in Outlook.

Please share the results of the three checks above, without posting the email address or any other personal information, so the appropriate next step can be provided.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Bob Christian 0 Reputation points

2026-08-02T04:58:35.7633333+00:00
Personal account on outlook.live

In the people screen when I select a contact both edit and delete are available and appear to work fine.

The contact is not in my contract list and only appears when trying to add a contact to an email. If I add the email address directly it defaults to a name that I is not one I know but the email address is correct. And I am unable to assign the email address to a contact that name I prefer.

Regards,
Victor1-V 12,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-08-02T09:51:56.4866667+00:00

Hi Bob,

Thank you for clarifying. Since the address is not in your contact list and the unwanted name appears only when composing a message, it is a suggested recipient rather than a saved contact. Outlook can build these suggestions from names and addresses previously used in messages.

For a personal Microsoft account, open the Microsoft account Privacy page, find People suggestions or Expanded people suggestions, and turn it off. Then, in Outlook.com, open People and create a new contact using the correct email address and your preferred name. Saved personal contacts can still appear as recipient suggestions after this setting is turned off.

Please allow Outlook.com to refresh, then start a new message and select the newly saved contact. I hope this resolves the incorrect name shown for that address.
Victor1-V 12,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-08-04T13:45:47.1133333+00:00

I hope you are doing well, Bob!

I'm following up to check if you've had a chance to look over my reply.

Please feel free let me know if you need any further assistance. I look forward to hearing back from you.