How to Disable Caching of Global Address Book

Overview

Explains how to configure Microsoft Outlook to use the global address book on the server instead of a locally cached copy.

Goal

After completing this tutorial you will have configured Microsoft Outlook to always reference the latest version of the global address book directly from the email server rather than referencing a downloaded local copy.

Steps

Follow these steps to disable caching of the global address book:

1. Close any open Outlook windows.
2. Open the registry editor (regedit.exe).
3. Navigate to the following key (if the key does not exist, create it):

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Outlook\Cached Mode

   Note: replace "<version>" with the number corresponding to the version of Microsoft Outlook that you are using. For example, Microsoft Oulook 2013 = "15.0", Microsoft Outlook 2010 = "14.0" and Microsoft Outlook 2007 = "12.0".
    
4. Change the value of the DownloadOAB entry to 0. If the entry does not exist, create it with the following values:

   ModeParameter: DownloadOAB
   Type: REG_DWORD
   Value: 0 

5. Close the registry editor (regedit.exe).
6. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the following folder:

   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Offline Address Books

   Note: replace "<username>" with the username of the account used to login to the computer. For example, "joe.doe".
    
7. Delete any subfolders within the Offline Address Books folder that have names seemingly made up of random numbers and letters, such as "d56d468c-ae38-43af-9b80-0fc9c2e00491".

After completing these steps, you can reopen Outlook, make sure that it is not in Offline mode, and search for an email address to confirm that it is now referencing the most current global address book.