Is this happening for all clients or just one?  If it's just one, try deleting your profile and setting GalDownloadInitialDelay to 0 as seen in this link: http://www.lyncfix.com/2014/01/19/the-address-book-is-preparing-to-synchronize/

If it's many, check your Lync Front End event logs for Address Book Service errors.  Post any events or information you see. Try running update-csaddressbook from the Lync Management Shell and post any errors or warnings you see there and in the Lync section of the event log.

Hi,

any search with any character will return No matches as the image below

• Edited by Mashhour K Faraj Wednesday, November 26, 2014 7:34 AM

Hi,

Did you solve the issue with the help of Anthony provided above?

If the issue persists, please try to change the value of Lync client policy parameter AddressBookAvailability to WebSearchOnly and then test again.

More details:

http://blog.schertz.name/2010/11/forcing-lync-address-book-web-query/

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Best Regards,
Eason Huang