A while back when I was using Outlook 2007, the contacts from Outlook would show up in Skype with a different icon so that I knew they were Skype contacts. This worked really well for me because I keep all my contacts in Exchange and Outlook (synch’d to google) and it made it very easy to simply double-click on someone’s name in Skype and have them dial their phone number that was stored in Exchange/Outlook. Best of all, any updates I would make on my phone to contacts would automatically get synch’d up with Outlook and as a result, Skype as well.
However, when I upgrade to Outlook 2010 it didn’t seem to work any more. Regardless of the Skype settings, Outlook would not pick up my Outlook contacts. Finally, I found the reason:
The reason was because I had installed the web-installer version of Outlook 2010. When you purchase Outlook 2010, they give you the option to do a quick install via their web-installer (which downloads the Outlook files necessary based on what installation options you select) or they give you the option to download the entire Outlook 2010 package at once. Aparently the two different installation options (web-install versus full download) get registered differently after you install; I guess they are technically different versions. Skype was not smart enough to recognize that I had the web-installer version of Outlook and therefore did not look for Outlook contacts. Once I downloaded the full version of Outlook 2010 and installed it contacts started showing up right away.
Note to Skype: Fix this. It’s annoying.