How to Manage Your Contacts
Create, view, update, and delete contact records in your Outlook contacts book.
Add, view, update, and delete entries in your Outlook personal contacts book.
View a Contact’s Full Details
tool: manage-contact
params:
action: "get"
id: "contact-id..."Create a New Contact
“Add a contact for Jane Smith at jane@company.com”
tool: manage-contact
params:
action: "create"
displayName: "Jane Smith"
email: "jane@company.com"With additional details:
tool: manage-contact
params:
action: "create"
displayName: "Jane Smith"
email: "jane@company.com"
mobilePhone: "+61 400 000 000"
companyName: "Acme Corp"
jobTitle: "Product Manager"
notes: "Met at the Melbourne conference"If displayName contains a space, it’s automatically split into first and last name.
Update an Existing Contact
“Update Jane’s email to jane.smith@newcompany.com”
tool: manage-contact
params:
action: "update"
id: "contact-id..."
email: "jane.smith@newcompany.com"Only the fields you specify are updated — existing fields are preserved.
Delete a Contact
tool: manage-contact
params:
action: "delete"
id: "contact-id..."A deleted contact doesn’t go to Deleted Items, and Microsoft Graph doesn’t document a way to restore it (Outlook’s Recover deleted items may work for a limited time, but don’t rely on it), so treat it as permanent. Add dryRun: true to check which contact an ID belongs to first. Nothing is deleted; the preview reads:
DRY RUN — nothing was changed.
Deletes contact 'John Smith' (john@example.com; Acme Corp).Parameter Reference
| Parameter | What it does | Used with |
|---|---|---|
action | list, search, get, create, update, delete | All |
id | Contact ID | get, update, delete |
displayName | Full name | create, update |
firstName, lastName | Given name and surname (combined into displayName when that’s left out) | create, update |
email | Primary email address | create, update |
emails | Several email addresses; the first is primary | create, update |
mobilePhone | Mobile phone number | create, update |
companyName | Company name | create, update |
jobTitle | Job title | create, update |
notes | Personal notes | create, update |
query | Search text | search |
count | Number of results (default 50 for list, 25 for search) | list, search |
skip | Paging offset; use the value the previous page suggests | list |
folder | Contact folder ID | list |
outputVerbosity | minimal, standard (default) or full | list, search |
dryRun | Preview which contact would be deleted, without deleting it | delete |
Tips
- Creating a contact needs at least one of
displayName,firstName/lastName,emailoremails - Use
search-peoplefor broader searches (directory + recent contacts) — see Find Contacts and People - Contacts sync across Outlook desktop, web, and mobile
Related
- Find Contacts and People — search for people across all sources
- Tools Reference — manage-contact
