Symptom
=======================================
The contact presence displays unknown since most of the company does not have Lync, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Even tried the following settings, but still did not work.
- In Outlook: Disabling the Outlook Lync Add-in 'Lync Meeting Add-in'
- In Lync:
- Personal/Personal Information Manager - Changing drop-down to NONE (from Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Outlook)
- Personal/Location - Unchecking 'Share my location info with other programs I use'
- Contacts List - Unchecking 'Contact Status'
=============================================
The issue can be resolved by modifying the registry.
Outlook reads the following registry key in order to display presence information in Outlook.
1. Start, Run, type Regedit press OK
2. Navigate through the folder tree to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IM Providers
3. Select the String DefaultIMApp
4. Delete the value
Lync
Figure 2
5. Restart Outlook for the changes to take effect.
Now we will not see the presence information in Outlook, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Reference: