I tried the pda phones years ago, and after days of frustration, I swore them off......i've just returned to them and purchased an HTC Fuze....in general amazing technology.....but have been befuddled by the lack of basic contact filtering functionality!  

It would appear there has been a major oversite in contact filtering functionality and contact management in windows mobile 6.1 and it's affects become much more significant as your contact list grows.....I currently manage about 1800 contacts in outlook (95% of which I dont use on a monthly basis), and have seen posts of others trying to manage as many as 4000...and without basic filtering functionality, the contact managment on windows mobile 6.1 is incredibly cumbersome!

Filter Features Missing:
1) Ability to set a default filter such that each time you select contacts, your default filter is applied
2) Since item 1) does not appear to doable at this time, it would have been nice if once a filter was applied to the contacts, it would persist until the phone is turned off, but as it is now, any filter which is applied is dropped as soon as you close that session of contacts, such that when you reopen your contacts, you are greeted with all your contacts yet again.
3) They allow you to add sim contacts and outlook contacts, which I need for the way I manage my info.......but there is no simple, built in, default fitler to show just sim contacts or just outlook contacts!? A work around is to add a generic catagory to every outlook contact, and then filter on that generic category or filter on 'No Categories' (which would show sim only if all your contacts have your generic category), but why have to enter a generic category for every new contact and use this work around when a simple sim filter and contact filter would do the job!?

 Below are links to other forums where the same or similar issues have been posted....this looks like its been an issue since 2007!

http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/windowsmobilesuggestions/thread/30d0d437-91fc-431a-a32e-4b8ce3b71844/
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=303088
http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/message?board.id=samsung&message.id=36674&query.id=1452151#M36674

I hope some tells me I've missed something....but I've spent 8 hours trying to  work around this issue...and until I can find the work around, this thing is anything but an efficient tool for my mobile contact needs...

Please help!

Thanks
b 

Welcome to The Connection, bryanc.

I had never noticed this in WM6 - and you are correct, whenever you go back into the Contacts, the filter changes back to 'All'. It might be because in earlier versions, the default did not revert back and many people panicked because they thought they had lost some contacts as they didn't notice that the filter was still on. I must have answered a dozen questions from people asking why they had lost their contacts, where in fact it was just a question of changing the filter back to 'All'.

... Is there a solution?

No, you need to select the filter each time.

Pocket Informant might help you - it filters in the same way and the filter stays on until changed. It also has many more features for all the PIM data than the standard Pocket Outlook features.