Technology Notebook

Outlook::Name Completion

Issues with Outlook XP/2002 name completion.
This is the kind of stuff I normally just tell people "This gets corrupt occasionally and it must be deleted and recreated." Which is the truth - that is Microsoft's official answer. In the outlook profile directory, delete the *.NK2 file and the name completion cache will start again fresh.
However there are some people that this answer cannot be given to. So I've spent a good amount of time recently messing around with OL name completion. In my travels I found that there is a utility that will actually edit this file. (If you are interested it is named Owtlook and you can google search for it's name or NK2 file and get a million hits because some guy named Randy has lurked in every news group and forum on Outlook and replied to every poor soul who has problems with Outlook name completion. Even getting into fights with people who pass along the true Microsoft answer I stated above.)
I have also found a possible bug in Outlook name completion behavior: The NK2 file is written upon closing Outlook. This doesn't appear to happen if I logout or restart my computer without first closing down Outlook. So if I have no NK2 file, open outlook and populate some addresses in the cache and restart my computer then no NK2 file is created. And if I have an NK2 file and run Outlook and add names to this cache, those entries aren't written to the NK2.
Strange......
I am running:
Outlook XP/2002 SP3 (from Office XP Professional.)
Windows XP SP2