The Contact Selector consists of 3 data nodes: DisplayName AccountId AccountType Each is just a text field. When you publish your form, you have the option of promoting one or all of the fields. DisplayName only contains the PreferredName attribute of the User Profile Database, which is typically in the form of LastName, FirstName, but it depends on your AD setup. AccountId is the most valuable field, because it contains the user's domain name in the form of domain\username (i.e. microsoft\userId). If you promote this field to SharePoint, then this value is immediately usable for sending workflow emails in SharePoint Designer. I do this all the time. Also, that value can have the domain portion stripped out and be used to query the GetUserProfileByName web method to retrieve the selected user's profile info, including Email Address, Manager, Department, and many other attributes stored in the profile database. Since these are text fields, they do not match