Lync/SfB Address Book Files

Found this great article when looking at issue for a customer the other day around how the client address book file name are generated..

https://ucblog.info/2016/04/16/lync-address-book/

Screen shots below are from the above blog link.

Lync ABS Configuration Tool

I came across an issue today where some contact for an organisation were not being updated/added the the Lync address book.  

After some research we found that all users that were missing weren't SIP enabled or didn't have any telephone number assigned within Active Directory.

So I decided to play around with the ABS Configuration Tool to see if we can fix the issue.

The first thing that i noticed was the "Is this Attribute Required?" tick-box.

I wasn't able to find anything that explained how this was working as there are multiple "AD Attribute Name" with this tick-box enabled.

After some playing I "think" I figured out they acted like an "OR" statement, so as long as a user account, contact object or group has one of the values "required" Lync would reference them in the address book update.

The following TechNet article on Administering the Address Book Service has a nice description of what can be referenced in the address book.

The ABS Configuration tool can be found in the Lync 2013 Resource Kit Tools, the Lync Server 2013 Resource Kit Tools Documentation has all the details on the tools, there is a word file in the download but there are things wrong that you notice off the bat, the image from the ABS Configuration tool is actually from the Lync Stress tester.

Lync 2013 Client Address Book Update

The Lync client by default will download the address book from the Lync FE server after a random amout of time once the address book is more that 24 hours old.

There is a Registry Key that can be updated to set the initial delay to 0 mins, in other words as soon as your local file is either: 

1. Not on the PC (has been deleted)
2. Or is more that 24 hours old

The following reg add is the key, its slightly different to from the 2010 client as Lync 2013 policies now reside under the office 15.0 side of things.

reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync /v GalDownloadInitialDelay /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

The address book files on the client are now also stored at a different location.

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync\sip_<lync_signin_address>

Lync Address Book Download

The Lync address book, by default is updated every night at 1:30am.  This process updated all the delta, compact and compact delta files that are located on the Lync file share under

\\<Server FQDN>\<Share Folder>\1-WebServices-1\ABFiles

The Lync client downloads the user address book (if enabled in the client policy) for the first time after user login a random time between 0 and 60 mins.


To force the address book to download at a controlled point in time you can run a registry hack to add the GalDownloadInitialDelay value

reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator /v GalDownloadInitialDelay /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

This will force the address book to download as soon as the Lync client is signed in, as long as the address book hasn't been downloaded.


To remove the previously downloaded address books you can delete the two address book files found under:

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Communicator\sip_<lync_signin_address> 

1. GalContacts.db
2. GalContacts.db.idx