I removed outlook, and reinstalled it.
I think I know what the problem was, but I am not sure.
Because I need to develop with VB and MS office, and can have customers with different versions of Office, both Office97 and Office 2000 is installed on my machine.
Unfortunately, the admin installed them in the wrong order.
He first installed Office 2000, and then Office 97.
If you ever need both versions on the same machine, I advise you to install them in the order they appeared, so first office 97 and then Office 2000 (or later).

This is already problem number 4 or so, that was caused by the wrong order of installations.

After reinstalling Outlook the expected behaviour was back; outlook came with a question if I wanted to allow the other program to access my address list. This is acceptable to me.