Issue: Unable to delete duplicate contacts from Outlook 2013.
Error Message: You cannot make changes to contents of this read-only folder.
Problem Statement:
You can found that in Outlook 2013 People tab, there's a "Lync Contacts" folder under "My Contacts", which is created by Lync 2010/ 2013 client enabled by option "Save my Lync contacts in my personal contacts folder on Exchange" / selected “Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Outlook” under ‘Personal Information manager’. However sometime you are seeing duplicate contacts there and when you want to delete any contact under "Lync Contacts", a pop-up windows displayed and said: you cannot make changes to contents of this read-only folder.
Lync Contact folder shows duplicate contacts and that will not allowing to delete or move those contacts in any other folder.
Resolution:
Not allowing delete or move Lync contacts from Outlook is the expected behavioral. Sometime it will allow you to delete Lync contacts from Outlook however most of the time it won’t allow to delete.
You have couple of option to delete these unwanted contacts:
1. Delete “Lync Contact” folder from Outlook 2013.
2. Delete “Lync Contact” folder from OWA.
3. Visit MS site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2916650
Before deleting any contact, first disable the Lync – Outlook sync.
Lync 2013 à Options à Personal à Personal Information manager and select “None”.
Then use above method to remove Lync contacts.
In My case issue was bit different, user were seeing more than 10K contacts under Outlook 2013, one phone number was showing so many time under Lync contact. Later we have deleted the contacts from Outlook 2013 through OWA and then allowed to sync Lync contacts to Outlook again.
However after some time Lync buddy list appeared under Outlook Lync Contacts however one phone shows more than 100 times.
When I checked users buddy list found that duplicate Phone number was added there as contact in Lync and that phone number was not in use.
Later deleted that phone number from Lync buddy list and issue got resolved.
I don’t know why that number was syncing and showing more than one time on Lync Contact in Outlook However after deleting that number from Lync buddy list issue got resolved.
Article applicable to:
Outlook 2013
Outlook 2010
Lync 2010 and 2013.
Thank you.