Sort Microsoft Outlook Contacts By Date Created
Have you ever added someone to Microsoft Exchange sync’d mobile device, then forgotten their name? BUT you know a general time period of when you added the contact?
Well, I have, and never knew how to find the “created on” attribute… but i guess I never looked very hard. But tonight I was really feeling frisky and decided to look at all the attributes on an item in Outlook. There’s a whole bunch of attributes that you don’t normally see, which always kinda gets me interested… Here’s how to sort your contacts by their creation date, showing the day that you added them to your phonebook or contact list:
In Outlook 2010:
- Click on the contacts view in Outlook
- Click the View Tab in the Ribbon
- Click Change View>List
- Click View Settings
- Click Columns
- From the pulldown menu choose “All Post Views”
- Hilite “Created” in the list
- Click “Add ->”
- If you want, put the Created as the first in the list
- Click OK>OK
- Sort at leisure!
In Outlook 2003:
- Open your contacts view in Outlook
- Go to View>Arrange By>Current View>Phone List
- Go to View>Arrange By>Current View>Customize Current View
- Click Fields
- From the pulldown menu, select All Post Fields
- Hilite “Created” in the list
- Click “Add ->”
- Click OK>OK
- Check out your new “Created” column in the view. BOOM
- Click the Column header to sort by date.
Ron – You ARE the man!!!!!! There are a lot of articles/blogs etc about this but yours is the clearest and precise solution to this sorting by Created Date!!!
THANK YOU – THANK YOU
Have a great Holiday
MViera
December 15, 2010 at 11:07 am
Hey forgot to mention: THIS WORKS WITH OFFICE 2007 TOO!!!
MViera
December 15, 2010 at 11:09 am
Very helpfull, thanks!!!
Morriah
April 6, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Thanks very much for this post – SUPER SUPER helpful!
-RC
Rob Currey
April 20, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Dear Ron,
it works very well .. but i need a solution to this :
1-i had X number of contacts on my computer
2-after exporting the contacts i formatted the computer and configured outlook 2007 and put these X contacts on it
3-the contacts creation date showed that they were created all in the same date (the date i put the contacts on my new outlook)
how can i get back the real creation date of each contact??
thank you
Abed-R. 'Ghaleb
July 21, 2011 at 7:23 am
Hi Abed: you would have to go back to the original data source for that information, if it still exists. It doesnt sound like you imported the contact creation date into outlook, so there would not be a way, within Outlook, to identify that information.
r0nwilliams
July 21, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Dear Ron,
Thanks for the idea of sorting by date.
However, when exporting the file into Excel, I can´t find the field “Created” in the list. Is that true?
thanks
Pat
Patrick
March 1, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Thank you! Very easy to follow and extremely helpful. One comment: in step 6. under Outlook 2010 change “All Post Views” to “All Post Fields”
Barry Milberg
October 21, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Thank you …you saved me to find a contact I created and forgot…
TNG
October 26, 2011 at 8:35 am
Thank you so Much!! You just saved me hours of work, trying to figure out who needed to be added to the Christmas Card List! THANK YOU!!!
Vicki
December 1, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Thank You Ron… Installing BCM and this is helpful in cleaning up 10 years for Contacts…
Jim Betts
December 7, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Thank you so much, very useful and explained with screenshot very clear!
Kenneth
December 16, 2011 at 1:53 am
This was exactly what I was looking for. I’m trying to track how many new contacts I add each week to see how effective my networking and referrals are. So I like to sort them by create date and count.
It worked fine for Outlook 2007, too.
Thanks,
Matt
Matt
January 31, 2012 at 12:19 pm
I’m totally loving you right now! That was so easy
Annie J
July 19, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Thanks!
r0nwilliams
December 12, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Thank you so much. You are awesome? I looked for hours to find any kind of answer and yours way right on and easy to follow. Can’t thank you enough. Anne
Anne Pace
October 18, 2012 at 3:13 pm
No problem, Anne! Thanks
r0nwilliams
December 12, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Respect the skillz! much thanks for this tip!
Chris
January 11, 2013 at 2:59 pm
mad skillz @ Chris
r0nwilliams
January 17, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Thank you, it really helped me find a lost contact……. quickly.
G P Singh, New Delhi, India
January 14, 2013 at 8:05 am
Thanks G P!
r0nwilliams
January 17, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Very interesting, is there a way to sort MS contacts By user who created the contact ?
Jean-Baptiste
February 4, 2013 at 5:46 am
It seems to work with the field “from” but I can’t modify it (or find where we can modify it).
Jean-Baptiste
February 4, 2013 at 5:55 am
Much appreciated. My boss was very impressed.
BD1ck13
April 23, 2013 at 1:20 pm