About this lesson
Previously known as Distribution lists, a Contact Group is one contact record that contains multiple people.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s exercise file.
Contact Groups aka Distribution Lists.docx298.4 KB
Quick reference
Contact Groups aka Distribution Lists
A Contact Group is one contact record that contains multiple people.
When to use
If you find yourself redundantly adding the same people to an email, create a Contact Group once and for all. Then just add that “group” to the email; it saves time and frustration.
Instructions
Open your contacts view by clicking the People button:
OR 
- Click New Contact Group
- Name the Group and click “Add Members”:
- Select and Double Click the names to be added to the Group:
- If you need to Remove someone, open the Group and select “Remove Member”
- If a member’s individual contact info has changed, you must go back into the Group file and click “Update Now”. The groups do not auto-update.
- When the new Group Contact is created, Right Click it for options to use it, i.e. Create an Email or Meeting:
- When using a Group Contact in an email, the To: line displays like this:
Click the plus sign “+” beside it will open up the names to be viewable by all who receive the email.
- To Delete a Contact Group,
- Click the Contact Group card and press delete, OR
- Open the Contact Group card and click Delete Group
- In a new email, click the To: line and notice the icon beside the Contact Group compared to the individual Contact files:
- 00:05 In this lesson, I'd like to talk to you about distribution lists,
- 00:09 now named New Contact Group.
- 00:10 But they are the same thing, we've just always known them as distribution lists.
- 00:15 To activate one and start one, I'm going to go ahead and
- 00:17 click on the New Contact Group.
- 00:19 I'm gonna go ahead and enter a name.
- 00:21 And now, I simply have to add members.
- 00:24 When you click Add Members, you have the option to choose from Outlook contacts,
- 00:28 where everyone will mostly stay or the address book,
- 00:31 which if you're in a corporate Microsoft Exchange environment, some of your names
- 00:35 may be in here but mostly everyone else is gonna see right here with our contacts.
- 00:40 And now we're gonna go ahead and gather all of them up.
- 00:43 Simply a double-click on all the ones you want, and
- 00:48 when I hit OK, they all land right in here.
- 00:51 So, my members are added.
- 00:53 Now, there's one in here I don't want to be on the team, so
- 00:56 I'm gonna click on this one, and I'm going to remove that member.
- 00:59 If, one of the members has had a change.
- 01:02 Maybe their email address changed or some other item changed.
- 01:06 You must come back into the group and update now.
- 01:09 These will not automatically update based on the changes of their
- 01:13 individual contact records.
- 01:14 You have to come in here and hit the Update Now.
- 01:17 After the group is made, I can send an email from
- 01:20 this screen to the entire group, or I can schedule a meeting to the entire group.
- 01:25 Well at this point, I'm going to go ahead and save and close the group.
- 01:29 And notice I have a brand new card in here, called GoSkills Team.
- 01:34 At this point I can do a right click.
- 01:36 And I have options here to go ahead and
- 01:38 forward this group to as an Outlook contact via an e-mail.
- 01:44 I can create an e-mail with this group name at the top.
- 01:47 Or a meeting with this group name at the top.
- 01:50 So if I click e-mail, a brand new e-mail screen comes in and there's my group name.
- 01:54 Notice there's a plus sign beside the name.
- 01:57 When I hit the plus sign, I will receive a warning.
- 02:00 If I expand the list,
- 02:02 all of these names will be visible to everyone who gets the list.
- 02:05 So, I could hit cancel now, and
- 02:06 then everyone that gets the email will only see GoSkills Team.
- 02:09 But when I hit OK, it will open it wide open, and all of them will be displayed.
- 02:14 It's personal preference and up to you if you wanna do that.
- 02:18 I'm gonna go ahead and close this.
- 02:19 If I am finished with the group altogether,
- 02:22 I can click it and press delete on my keyboard,
- 02:25 or I could double-click to open it and I could delete the group from here.
- 02:30 I do want to show you how an email, brand new email,
- 02:35 And how you can just type in GoSkills.
- 02:39 When I type that it in, up comes a team right here.
- 02:43 Just double click it and it pops into my screen or
- 02:46 I could click on the two line and
- 02:48 the two line will show you the difference between regular individual contacts and
- 02:52 then the group contact, has, you can see it here, has a double person on it.
- 02:58 So that means multiple people.
- 03:00 And then of course double-click that and it would go onto the list as well.
- 03:05 The last thing to show you would be on the contacts.
- 03:08 Again, if you want to edit the group, simply double-click it.
- 03:12 You can go ahead and add new members, you can remove members.
- 03:15 But again, had any of them been updated, I would have to hit the Update Now button.
- 03:20 All right, I hope that helps explain distribution lists and how to use them.
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