[Fixed] Contact photos not showing up in MS Outlook 2013

The Problem

My company have our employees pictures uploaded to Exchange Server and it does show up all the while in MS Outlook 2010. But after upgrade to MS Office 2013, the photos doesn't show anymore!
Playing with Options and stuffs; multiple restarts; multiple download Global Address Book; multiple "safe mode run"; they just don't show up! So frustrated!

This is what we see:

Yep.. this beautiful default picture instead of our cute picture LOL.

This guy have exactly same problem as mine:

I am running Outlook 2013 with Exchange 2010.  When I was in Outlook 2010, this was not an issue.
Contacts have photos.  When viewing emails the contact photos do not appear.
I tried using the SEND/RECEIVE >> Send/Receive Groups >> Download Address Book; Did not resolve
I renamed the .oab files in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Offline Address Books\11d6f6ed-0e4c-49ed-9877-9574f16afa6a\ to .old with Outlook shutdown.  When I started up Outlook, the photos began displaying, but there were only temp files in the folder.  As soon as the .oab files were regenerated by Outlook, the photos were broken again.
As a final means of fixing the issue, I renamed C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook_old and let Outlook build and entirely new offline folder.  This did not resolve the issue either.
Please advise on how to fix this.
Link: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitpro/thread/d0daf5a3-1711-4575-bfd0-a0dda40b81ce/

The Solution

(close Outlook first)

Delete off Offline Address Book (.oab)

1. Go to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Offline Address Books
2. Delete off the GUID folder (example: e2fab546-c36e-4e1d-bfed-6b91f30cfa76)
   

Modify the Registry

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Type regedit, and then click OK
3. Locate and then click to select the following key:
   

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook

4. In the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Key.
5. Type Cached Mode.
6. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
7. Type DownloadOAB, and then click OK.
8. In the right pane, right-click DownloadOAB, and then click Modify.
9. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type 0, and then click OK.
10. On the Registry menu, click Exit.

EDIT: For MS Office 2106, it's the key is located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook

You can set the DownloadOAB value to any one of the following values, depending on your situation:

• 0 = The Offline Address Book does not download automatically.
• 1 = The Offline Address Book uses the Download Full Items download mode. This is the default setting.
• 2 = Download the Offline Address Book in any download mode, but download a differential update in the Header only download mode.
• 3 = Always download the Offline Address Book and a differential update in one of the following download modes:
  - Download Headers and then Full Items
  - Download Full Items
  - Download Headers

When you set this registry value to 0 (zero), cached-mode Outlook is forced to perform directory lookups against an Active Directory directory service global catalog server. This action increases the timeliness of access to modified or new Active Directory objects. However, this action also negates some of the increased tolerance for network latencies and outages.

A screenshot for you so you can get a better picture:


Start Outlook, and TADA~! Photos' up!


Sincerely hope this won't waste your time reading, and seriously hope this will fix your problem.

Give me a Like, a +1 or just drop a comment if this fix yours! :D

Thanks,
Jo

Share this :