Linking Contact Records in Outlook

Outlook has feature called Contact Linking that allows you to link a contact with any appointment, task, other contacts or even an email. Before Outlook 2007 you could enable a field with a Contacts button.

For Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 you needed to go into Contact Options and enable a setting to see the Contact Linking field.
With the latest version of Outlook 2013 and 2016, this option is no longer available. You can however still link Contacts by editing the registry and adding the feature to your Outlook. Here is how.

Outlook Appointment with Contact Linking Example:

To add this option to Outlook do the following:

Type Windows key + R to open the Run command then type regedit and press Enter.

Once open browse the the following directory in Regedit:

Outlook 2016

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\preferences

Click on the preferences key, right click on it and choose New > DWORD.
Type or copy/paste showcontactfieldobsolete and press Enter.
Press Enter again to open it and set the value to 1

This will show the Contact linking field. Set it to 0 or delete the DWORD or to turn it off.

DWORD: showcontactfieldobsolete
Value = 1

Outlook 2013

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\office\15.0\outlook\preferences

Click on the preferences key, right click on it and choose New > DWORD.
Type or copy/paste showcontactfieldobsolete and press Enter.
Press Enter again to open it and set the value to 1

This will show the Contact linking field. Set it to 0 or delete the DWORD or to turn it off.

DWORD: showcontactfieldobsolete
Value = 1

Open Outlook and open a new appointment, you should now see the Contact button enabled as shown above.

NOTE: Editing the registry can be dangerous as you could disrupt your entire operating system so tread carefully and at YOUR OWN RISK!

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