The New NK2 File A.K.A the Streaming Autocomplete Cache File. Where did it go?

Since we been installing exchange and Office 365, almost everyone and I mean everyone seems to think their name cache file is their address book or related to the address book.

If you fail to import this file after a 2007/10 Office upgrade you will have some very sad or possibly angry users.

After upgrading office, this file may not be imported or upgraded along with the new installation.

Here is a screenshot of what the new NK2 file or now known as Stream-Autocomplete file provides.
When you start emailing people, the file will keep the email addresses available so the next time you type the first letter of the email similar names come up to choose instead of remembering and typing out the full email. Very convenient. BUT this is not your address book, although some address's might be in your address book.

Heres what we do to get the file back for the user after upgrading Outlook:

We locate the file usually in
C:\Users\*USER PROFILE*\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\RoamCache

You will see many other files in this folder, but you will be working with Stream_Autocomplete.

Depending on office version, we'v seen this in My Documents\Outlook folder in the current user profile.

If all is well, after the upgrade you may have (2) Stream_AutoComplete files.

The smaller or "0" file size is the new one which was created when Outlook was opened after the upgrade with no names (email addresses) in the cache.

The larger one is the older cache file with all the email addresses.

Copy the name of the larger Stream file including the hash numbers up to the DOT and paste it on top of the smaller stream file, reopen outlook and your stream file should be back.

If you see only one Stream_Autocomplete and the file is not being picked up by Outlook you need to perform the following to regenerate a new Stream_Autocomplete file.

Send out a few emails to different people. This will create a new Stream_Autocomplete file

Go back to the RoamCache folder and perform the copy, rename steps as shown above.

And that is the story of the Nk2 also known as the Stream_Autocomplete file.