We recently upgraded to Exchange 2013 and I am getting complaints about the phone syncing their contacts with Outlook. For example, I have a user that has their own personal (not a company) iPhone.

The user swears they set their phone NOT to exchange contacts but they were uploaded to exchange anyway. Obviously, a lot of users don't like that (having their personal contacts loaded into the company directory).

How do I block or stop the syncing of personal contacts with Exchange 2013 so they do not show up in outlook?

Any help would be appreciated.

TIA

TIA,

Automatic updates of contacts enabled by default as a feature of social connector in outlook. To change the setting in Outlook 2010, View->People->Account Settings->Settings button and change the update option from Update without prompting to Prompt before update or Never update.

Group policy will help for bulk operation in the following section of GPO:

Outlook > Outlook Social Connector->Block Global Address List synchronization.

HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\outlook\socialconnector
DWORD: disablecontactgalsync
Value: 1 (no sync)

I will try that out. Thanks much. Very helpful and looks to be spot-on. I love that you added the GPO info too... that extra effort means something, at least to me.

:)

Oh and TIA was just short for Thanks in Advance :)

Thanks. I have also made a blog entry for this in my blog. Have a look: http://exchangeonline.in/block-syncing-personal-phone-contacts-in-gal/

I want to make sure that :

1. Is this function will delete the personal contacts ? For example , then the personal contacts uploaded to exchange contacts, user choose the "my iphone" group in their iphone, they can see nothing in it. This is my actual situation.  

2. If I disable the GAL synchronization by using Group Policy, I think the address book in the outlook client will be stop work , is it ?

3. I met this situation, but I don't know how to reconstruct it , do you have a way to reconstruct?

• Edited by Pabloy 8 hours 18 minutes ago