Users contacts are read-only

Question

_{Monday, December 17, 2018 7:26 PM}

I've been migrating our users from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2016. I have several users that since migrating them (though it's possible this could have been an issue prior to migration) they are unable to edit their Contacts. They can create new Contacts, but cannot edit existing ones. Opening an existing Contact shows it as Read Only at the top of the Contact window.

Clients are using a mix of Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016. Users are *not* using cached Exchange mode. Users can modify the Contact in OWA, just not from Outlook.

Another interesting behavior:

- User opens a Contact in OWA and edits the State value (changing it from nothing to TN).

- The Contact summary window in Outlook updates to reflect the new State value as entered in OWA.

- Double-clicking that Contact and opening it however still shows the State field as empty.

All replies (4)

_{Tuesday, June 16, 2020 12:36 PM ✅Answered}

Fun story: I was just looking up this problem again and found my own post here. Using the date of this post I dug through my old support tickets to see what I'd done to resolve the issue, so I'll post it here for posterity (since I clearly didn't back then).

In my specific instance the problem was due to our email archiving solution (Metalogix Archive Manager for Exchange). Our current archiving process is this: 7 days after an email arrives a copy of it is made in the archive (this allows time for minor things like "there are donuts in the conference room" to be deleted. 90 days after the item is copied to the archive, the server converts the item into a shortcut to the copy in the archive.

The read-only contacts were shortcuts to the archived copies. I'm not sure why OWA can edit the contact via that shortcut and Outlook can't, but that's what the issue was. The user restored the archived contact and made their edits.

_{Tuesday, December 18, 2018 9:21 AM}

Hi,

Can those new contacts be edited from Outlook?
Do users on Exchange 2010 or new created on Exchange 2016 have the same issue?
What is “The Contact summary window” you mentioned? Please provide some screenshots and don’t forget to cover your personal information.
Does “Double-clicking that Contact and opening it” mean open the contact from the Outlook address book contact list?

Here are some suggestions:

1. Create a new profile, and check if the issue persists.
2. Remove these contacts and add them back again.

Regards,

Lydia Zhou

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_{Thursday, December 20, 2018 1:25 PM}

Just checking in to see if above information was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance. 

Regards,

Lydia Zhou

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected].

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_{Monday, December 24, 2018 11:17 AM}

If you need further help, please feel free to reply this post directly so we will be notified to follow it up.

Regards,

Lydia Zhou

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected].

Click here to learn more. Visit the dedicated forum to share, explore and talk to experts about Microsoft Teams.