You Cannot Add or Block New Contacts in Windows Messenger (830544)

SYMPTOMS

When you use Microsoft Windows Messenger 5.0 to sign in to Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003, you may experience one or both of the following symptoms:

You cannot add additional contacts in Windows Messenger.
You receive a message that is similar to the following message: Username (username@example.com) has added you to his/her contact list. Do you want to:
- Allow this person to see when you are online and contact you
- Block this person from seeing when you are online and contacting you
If you click one of the options in the message, and then click OK, you receive an error message that is similar to the following error message:
Your allow list is full.
If you click Cancel, the message reappears when you next sign in to Live Communications Server 2003.

CAUSE

This issue may occur if one or both of the following conditions are true:

You have 150 contacts in your Windows Messenger contact list.
You have 300 entries specified under Visibility and Privacy on the Privacy tab in the Windows Messenger Options dialog box.

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, manually remove unused entries from the Privacy tab in the Windows Messenger Options dialog box:

Start Windows Messenger.
On the Tools menu, click Options.
Click the Privacy tab.
Right-click an item under My Allow List or under My Block List, and then click Delete.
Repeat step 4 until there are fewer than 300 total entries, and then click OK.

MORE INFORMATION

In Live Communications Server 2003, you can have up to 300 entries in the My Allow List and in the My Block List in Windows Messenger combined. Additionally, you can add up to 150 contacts from Live Communications Server 2003 to Windows Messenger.

Each entry in the My Allow List or in the My Block List list permits or prevents another user from seeing you (or your status) or from communicating with you through Windows Messenger. An entry is automatically created in one of these lists when you perform one of the following tasks:

You add a contact.
You allow another user to add you as a contact.
You block another user from adding you as a contact.

For example, if you add 50 contacts in Windows Messenger, 50 entries are automatically created in the My Allow List. Additionally, you can manually configure entries in these lists for specific contacts.

When you remove a contact, the corresponding entries are not automatically removed from the My Allow List or the My Block List. As a result, these lists may contain entries that you might no longer require. As a result, when you use Windows Messenger for a long time, you may reach the Live Communications Server 2003 limit on the number of "allow" or "block" entries. When you reach this limit, you cannot allow or block new contacts.