Kelly LaForest (Alumni)
Well it took a long time, but the feature I’ve been wishing for over two years is finally here.
Android phone users can finally add new contacts and edit existing contacts in the Outlook App without issue!
If you own an Android Phone and use the Outlook App for email, contacts, and calendars, you may be aware that adding new contacts to your Outlook Contacts via the Android phone did not work for a very long time (i.e. years).
In the past, if you added a new contact from within the phone’s native Contacts App, and select Outlook as your storage location (versus Phone storage, SIM card storage, or Google storage), it will appear to save the contact. However, it would in fact not save the contact to Outlook. The contact in question would actually disappear into the upside down without warning. The same thing would happen for edits made to contacts stored in Outlook. There was no Add Contact or Edit Contact buttons built into the Outlook App which further confused users.
Why would you save a contact to Outlook? By saving your contacts to the Microsoft Cloud, you do not lose your contacts if you lose or damage your phone or SIM card. When you get a new phone, all you have to do is download the Outlook app and log back in to re-populate your phone with your contact list.
In the past, the only workaround was to log into Outlook.com in your web browser on your computer and add or edit a contact from the web interface. Changes made from the Outlook.com web interface sync almost instantaneously to the phone, which was fantastic, however, having to wait until you get to a computer to update your phone contacts doesn’t cut it for me.
My workaround at the time was to write down a person’s name and phone number in OneNote until I had a chance to get to a computer.
Fortunately, we have good news! We can add and edit contacts right from Outlook on iOS and Android. This change was announced on June 2017. However, I was skeptical so I decided to take a moment today to test it out. The new contact that I added via my phone’s native contact list did appear in my Outlook.com web interface almost immediately (after I remembered to perform a refresh of the webpage). I also tested adding a new contact from the Outlook App’s People list and it worked just as fast. Same for making edits to existing contacts.
What a relief!
Thank you to Microsoft for listening and making this change. It look longer than I hoped, but I now feel confident recommending Android users to use the Outlook App without hesitation.
Nice post. I learn something totally new and challenging on websites I stumble upon on a daily basis. It will always be helpful to read through articles from other writers and use a little something from other websites.
moved here
I can’t find save button on my outlook app. I’m using an android phone.
I can see “+”. but after I input name, phone, email. I can’t find any save button or check button on my screen.
I was delighted to read your page. But when I hit the people tab on the home page on the outlook app for android that I recently installed on my Pixel, I couldn’t find the + sign. Can anyone help?
I am using the latest version of Android (8) and Outlook Android app, but I still have the same “upside down” issue.
I still have the same problem and I don’t know why. So this blog is not really useful for me.
Normaly I will see a hook at the upper right side. When I choose an Oulook account there is no hook to save the contact. What shall I do?
If I have all my contacts saved on my Android phone, how do I transfer / add them to my outlook App
Dear Kelly,
I found this good news from you. Thank you. But unfortunately I didn’t find the way to set appropriately my android phone to be capable to work perfectly saving my contact added in my phone in the Outlook people.
If I add a contact in through the web page of outlook people immediately I can find the contact on my phone but if I add a contact in n the phone it is not saved in the Outlook people. I tried in many way but I failed. Could you please explain the right complete procedure that has to followed? It is very strange that Microsoft doesn’t realise a clear procedure for this purpose. Microsoft abandoned windows10 smartphone and its users without saying anything about how to set on Android for having the same performance in the use of edge, Onenote, contacts, calendar, etc as Microsoft registered user.
Thank you very much.
Giuseppe
I am dealing with this today using android 11 and a note 20. apparently I had to use another account to update the contacts… esp to assign a specific ringer to a contact. The problem is I see no outlook account in contacts… I do see hundreds of duplicates… just switched phones and I see contacts in google… an app I do not recognize and a few in outlook when I went to see duplicates. I need a walkthrough on how to clear all contacts, then make outlook.com my only source and to be sure it is updatable.