Outlook Address Book disappeared

[Mageddie]

Yesterday I went to send some Christmas emails. Out of the blue, when I tried to address an email to a friend from the Address Book, which was totally intact earlier in the day, "Microsoft Window Outlook" window appeared as below.
By clicking "OK" the window appears again. Click OK the second time and this appears. The first time I did this I found ALL contact gone - hundreds of them!!
Despite backing up all other files, the Outlook files are not backed up!! DARN!

Anyone have any ideas of how to restore a missing Address Book? Where to look for it?

Or do I have to rebuild the entire list again? (minus those that should have been deleted anyway!!!

And why it would have happened? I'd done nothing out of the ordinary: no restarts, no uploads, no downloads of software.

 

[Trouble]

Interesting.
Outlook data is typically stored in your .pst file including your contacts / address book.
IF you click the down arrow next to "Contacts" is there any other options to choose in a list of potential selections to choose from?

 

[Mageddie]

Hi .. thanks.

This is how it appears to begin with. Down arrow then goes to ...

Recently lost all calendar entries when I installed iCloud, then uninstalled it because it was causing some other havoc. But that was a week ago and this Address Book was still there yesterday morning. Since uninstalling iCloud have done nothing different, hence the "out of the blue" comment!!

 

[davehc]

It isn't mentioned in your posts, but, I guess you have tried selecting "Outlook Address book"? - Your last pictures.

 

[Mageddie]

Yes, thanks. Selecting that brings up message "No entries in this Address Book".
The one I'm now rebuilding is "Contacts", which is a sub-option.

 

[Trouble]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with iCloud or how it might have been introduced into your Office Outlook program.
Did you search the computer for an alternate .pst file to see if somehow you got hijacked into another profile, subsequently an alternate .pst file is being used?
Just for the heck of it....
Right click the Start Button and choose Run from the context menu and in the Run Dialog box type
outlook -safe
Just to see if when it launches, you have a drop down to select an alternate profile.

 

[Mageddie]

Tried your suggestion, also put in other options with this result for each one.

This is a total nuisance, and I'm sure they must be somewhere. But the positive is that I'll rebuild the Contacts list only with currently required addresses. Had a couple of job switches in the last 12 mths so many addresses are now obsolete anyway!

I'm not going to mark this "solved" as someone might pop up with a solution. And I'll keep exploring. But meanwhile, at least I can get the (post) Christmas/New Year greeting emails out. Houseful of visiting family departed this morning, so now for the catch-up!

Thanks for you help.

 

[Mageddie]

Oh and Trouble: P.S. I accepted iCloud's offer to download, thinking I could get files to sync between PC and laptop. When I realised my mistake, and uninstalled it, all my calendar history had disappeared!!! But the Contacts were all still there till a couple of days ago. Disappeared without provocation, one might say!