If you’re using the next version of Office (That’s Office 2016, Preview available for download here), you’re already using the new Skype for Business client.
If you used Lync before and now you find that your address book is not up to date and you get the “Address book synchronizing. Results may not be current” message, you might want to force your client to download the address book.
This is a fairly simple task, and it’s quite similar to the workaround from the Lync 2010 and 2013 clients; all you need to do is add a registry key and you’re done.
If you already added this registry in the past, you’ll notice it stopped working, and here’s the reason:
The registry key we’re using for this is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync\GalDownloadInitialDelay with a value of ‘0’.
But if you go to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office you’ll see that you now have a 15.0 folder and a 16.0 folder:
This needs to be presented in the registry too.
So add the following key to your registry using an elevated command prompt window:
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Lync /v GalDownloadInitialDelay /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Exit the client, delete the two GalContacts files from your SIP_Username folder under the 16.0\Lync folder and restart the client.
You’re address book will be immediately downloaded to your client.