Outlook/Office 365 loads wrong display name on To: field.

Copper Contributor

Hi Community,

 

This is an annoying problem that has been happening where I work. It's not critical, but would be good to be able to fix it.

 

We use Office 365 and have Outlook installed on all user PCs (win7). When typing the destination email/name on To: field, you will see the correct name [Berni..] and email [accounts@..] on the autocompletion list (picture outlook_01.png). However, after hitting <Enter> it will fetch a wrong name [Rachel..] (from the former employee that used that email, but no longer belongs to our organization) (picture outlook_02.png).

 

If you double-click the name [Rachel..] (picture outlook_03.png) you'll see that both name and email are actually correct. Just the display name that its messed up. If you send the email, it will go to the right mailbox as well.

 

What I want to accomplish: To see the proper name [Berni..] on the To: field after selecting the mail item from the autocomplete list.

 

What I tried to do so far:

- local contacts overriding global contacts: checked but it's not the case, and the problem is happening on multiple computers

- user profile on O365 admin panel/ exchange: checked, no evident problems. (picture outlook_04.png the forum only allows 3 attachments)

- deleted autocompletion entries (single and everything). The same thing happens.

 

I'm thinking of deleting the mailbox and creating it again, but

1) There will be no fun

2) I would need to backup everything before. As it's a huge mailbox (and it will take a lot of time to do that), I'm hoping that a good soul out there with a trick under their sleeve would suggest me a better approach to fix the problem.

 

Please let me know if you need any other info and thanks in advance for any replies.

 

Cheers! :)

47 Replies

Same BS here. 

 

Made the fatal mistake of changing the username when one user left, so that the new user could have access to the old mails. I type in the full name of the user in the TO: field of another user (on the same domain) as peter@mydomain.com and it automatically changes to the name of the old user. 

 

I've already wasted about three hours on this. The only thing that I have found that rectifies the situation is to remove the profile and create a new one. So if you rename a user, you have to recreate everybody else's profile so that they can see the updated user's name. Well done again Microsoft. 

Any chance you could upload that fourth picture showing the Exchange settings in the Admin panel?

Following this thread. We are having the exact same issues at my company. I am new to the IT dept and we are trying to figure out a fix to no avail. 

Things I've tried: 

- Checking that the settings are right in the admin portal. 

- Click the x beside the remembered name in the TO: field.

- Shut down Outlook, remove the autocomplete files completely, restart Outlook. 

 

As a test I left the existing Outlook profile in place, and through Control Panel | Mail created a separate profile called Temp which I configured with the same settings as the original user. When I open this profile, the changed user's name appears correct all the time. 

 

So from my experience it is an issue with the local profile, not with the settings in the admin portal. New profiles do not have the problem. But something in the "memory" of the old profile has hard coded the old name to correspond with that email address. 

Sorry one more thing I tried was to do the online repair of Outlook and this did not work either.

Hi @Hal Hostetler, here's the requested picture. I did check the other options under the user profile, but all fields are empty.

Hmmmm. It's showing the wrong name on old and new employees...however, their email addresses are recycled so I guess they're not NEW employees just name is changed. 

hi rafael,

i have a concern with you related to your issue.
is this issue with any particular user or for all in your domain.

thanks
kiran.

Hi @Ravi kiran, thanks for your reply. This is happening to all users that try to send an email to the user "Berni". Once we click [verify name] on outlook client, the name changes to "Rachel", however, the address won't change at all. So the message goes to the right destination (at least).

Hi Community. First of all, I'd like to thank you all for your time and replies.

 

Secondly, I'm not sure if I should be happy or not, but the problem seems to have fixed itself. (!!!)

 

One of the users came to me this morning and reported that the names were ok now. I tested on few PCs and surprisingly, everything seems to be working as expected.

 

I didn't do anything new to the exchange configuration, so I have no idea of what happened here. I guess this is one of those mysteries that will remain on *the cloud*.

 

Well, in the case I get any new information over this, I'll reply to this post.

 

For now, thank you all and have a good day. :)

 

Cheers.

Raf

Hi there,

Just an update from here as well. My problem seems to have resolved itself as well, over a week later.

Every time we change the name, there is some time lag that the users find disconcerting. Usually the lag in the name change is about a day, but this time it was a week. In future, we are just not going to rename the account. We will create a new account from scratch and copy the mails to that account if needed.

Amazing that something so simple cannot be go right.

thanks to fellow posters.

In our instance, this behaviour has persisted.  It's been one year since the previous Sarah left the office.  The new Sarah shows up with the old Sarah's last name when typing her first name into the To field in Outlook.  If I click the To box and specifically search the Global Address List (instead of the offline copy), I still see the wrong last name. 

I don't think this problem is going to fix itself.

Do I need to create a new Outlook profile on everybody's computer?

I had this same issue and have managed to fix it as follows.  I'm going from memory here but you should get the idea.

 

Open Outlook.

Open the Address Book (Ctrl Shift B)

Find old employee name and double-click to open

Select add to contact list button

This immediately came up with the new person's details!

Hit Update button

Fixed!

 

Graham

 

 

 

Hi, 

 

We are facing the same issue as well. Any solutions?

Also having the same issues.  We primarily use OWA as our email application and we use an O365 Exchange cloud service (no local mail server).

 

I think I found the solution!

 

The issue with Outlook displaying the incorrect name is a failure of the Offline Global Address Book to properly update with the Display Name settings on Office 365 Website.

 

Here is the solution from start to finish:

 

Step 1) Login to Office 365 website as a Global Administrator

Step 2) In the "Admin Center" select "Users"

Step 3) Change the Display Name and Aliases.

Step 4) Log out of Website

Step 5) Open Outlook Program

Step 6) Go to File-> Info -> Accounting Settings (drop-down)-> Account Settings

Step 7) Double click on account with incorrect display name

Step 8) Uncheck box "Use Cached Exchange Mode to download email to an Outlook data file"

Step 9) Hit Next, then Finish

Step 10) Restart Outlook

 

You can go back and select the box again if you want.  Hope this works for you guys. Here is a Microsoft article that I found once I knew what to look for: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2429946/how-to-troubleshoot-the-outlook-offline-address-boo...

This fix does not work. I've only seen this once so far with many email setups, but cached or not cached outlook always shows the wrong from name for only some addresses.

I don't think this is an issue on the email user's end - I've been using this email for 1 1/2 years, changed the display name when I started, and had someone who I've never communicated with before last week tell me the address is showing the old name for them (on their gmail account). I've tried all of the fixes and it still shows up for some people. Very confusing for our clients, I'd love to fix it!

Same issue here too...