What is GAL ? (Global Address List)
The Outlook Global Address List is a directory of all the email addresses and contact information of the people in your organization. You can use it to find and communicate with your colleagues, managers, and other staff members. To access the Global Address List, open Outlook and click on the Address Book icon on the Home tab, if the icon is not available, you can search for Address Book via the top search bar. Within the Address Book you can search for a person by name, department, or location. You can also create personal contacts and groups from the Global Address List.
What is OAB ? (Offline Global Address List/Book)
The Outlook Offline Global Address List (OAB) is a feature that allows you to access the contact information of your organization's users, groups, and resources even when you are not connected to the internet. The OAB is automatically downloaded and updated by Outlook on a regular basis. You can also manually update the OAB at any time. To do so, follow these steps:
1. In Outlook, click on the Send/Receive tab.
2. In the Send/Receive Groups group, click on Send/Receive All Folders.
3. In the same group, click on Download Address Book.
4. In the dialog box that appears, make sure that Download changes since last Send/Receive is checked, and click on OK.
The OAB will be downloaded and updated in the background. You can use the OAB to search for and send emails to your organization's contacts even when you are offline.
Additional tips of how to find a user in GAL or OAB:
If you are missing an account, or the details are displayed incorrectly, try the below steps to resolve the issue:
- Try to search using email by typing in the email into the search box.
- Make sure search box is set to search "Columns" rather than "Name Only"
- Check if address book is set to be "Global Address List" and not "Offline Global Address List".