address book inflitration by chat servers

[minstrelite]

Does anyone know if there's any possible way to prevent AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Messenger from shoving my chat contacts into my Outlook Express address book against my will? I kind of like to separate the two, and be able to keep the email contacts in my OE address book neatly alphabetized by first and last names without having a swarth of chat handle names creating chaos in there. I love using the chat programs, but all this taking over my computer is totally obnoxious.

[Miz]

I messed around with Windows Messenger for quite a while and I couldn't even force it to add addresses to the address book.

If you ever send email by using the "Send Email" option under Actions in Messenger (or AIM if it has that feature), it may be an option in Outlook Express that needs disabling.

In Outlook Express, go to Tools>Options>Send tab and see if "Automatically put people I reply to in my address book" is checked. If it is, uncheck it and click OK to save the change.

If it was checked, that may be why addresses keep getting added.

[minstrelite]

I did uncheck that box, and I've noticed that the AIM buddies are no longer appearing in my Outlook address book. So hopefully the problem is solved. Thanks for the tip.