OL98: How to Create a Distribution List of Contacts (181493)

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You can create distribution lists in your Personal Address Book however, you can mimic the behavior of a distribution list without using a Personal Address Book. Using the Sort By Category feature of Outlook, you can create a new e-mail message addressed to a group of your contacts.

NOTE: These procedures assume that each contact contains a valid e-mail address.

First, assign each contact you want in your list to a common category. For example, you might assign all of your business contacts to the Business category. Second, group your contacts by category. Third, drag the category title to your Inbox. This creates a new e-mail message addressed to all of the contacts in your chosen category.

NOTE: You can assign multiple categories to a Contact so that in effect, they are in multiple distribution lists.

The steps below will use Business as an example category.

Assign Contacts to a Common Category

Follow these steps to assign contacts to the Business category:

1. In the Contacts folder, on the Tools menu, click Organize, click Using Categories, and click to select Business from the list of categories.
2. Hold down the CTRL key and click to select each contact you wish to add.
3. In the Organizer, click Add to add the selected category to each of the selected Contacts.

Group Your Contacts by Category

Follow these steps to group your contacts by category:

1. In the Organizer, click Using Views.
2. In the Change your view list, click to select By Category.

Create a New E-mail Message

Now that all of your contacts in the Business category are grouped together, you can drag the titlebar (Categories: Business) from the table view to your Inbox folder. This will create a new e-mail message addressed to all of your business contacts.