About this lesson
Previously known as Distribution lists, a Contact Group is one contact record that contains multiple people.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s exercise file.
Contact Groups aka Distribution Lists.docx155.9 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 Okay, let's create a Contact Group used to be called Distribution List.
- 00:09 Now, they call them Contact Groups.
- 00:11 Again, I am on Contacts of Ctrl+3 to get into Contacts.
- 00:14 I'll go ahead and click the option New Contact Group.
- 00:17 When this opens up,
- 00:19 it's asking me just a series of questions it wants me to name my group.
- 00:23 So I'm going to call this my GoSkills team.
- 00:25 So now, if you take a look up on top the ribbon,
- 00:28 I have one option here that says Add Members.
- 00:30 I can't remove or update, I don't have any in there yet.
- 00:32 So go ahead and click on the Add Members.
- 00:34 From my Outlook Contacts, which is my own personal Outlook group.
- 00:38 Or from address book if I'm in a corporate environment,
- 00:41 this is my global address book of everyone in the company.
- 00:44 Or new email contacts, I could actually create a new one right now.
- 00:48 I'm going to go ahead and choose my Outlook contacts.
- 00:50 And now I simply double click everyone that I want on this list and
- 00:55 all these names have wrong email addresses to protect the innocent.
- 01:01 At this time I'm going to go ahead and hit OK, and there is my group.
- 01:05 Now, notice, I've got these names on my group and whoops, I added this one twice.
- 01:09 So I can remove that member.
- 01:11 And let's see the Update Now, if any of these people in the future, if I update
- 01:16 their contact records, it does not automatically update the contact group.
- 01:21 I must come back into my group and the hit Update Now, so
- 01:25 that it will refresh and reconnect to that actual contact.
- 01:29 After this is made, I can email to the entire group from this screen,
- 01:33 I can create a meeting to the entire group from the screen,
- 01:36 I can categorize this, I can put a flag on this to follow up.
- 01:39 And check out this last button number here, Private, what's that mean?
- 01:43 I can mark this as private so that if I'm in a corporate environment,
- 01:47 maybe I have an assistant who can also work in my Outlook.
- 01:50 They wouldn't be able to open up and
- 01:52 see this if I have not given them edit permissions.
- 01:54 Maybe I just gave them view permissions, they couldn't actually go in and
- 01:57 see who is in this group.
- 01:58 So that's what the private button means, okay?
- 02:00 It's not really a lock down, because it doesn't password protect it.
- 02:04 But it's just kind of a cool feature.
- 02:06 All right, at this point I'm going to hit Save & Close.
- 02:08 When I Save & Close, as you can see on my screen, I'm going to go find it,
- 02:12 here it is my GoSkills Team right here.
- 02:15 So at this point check out this.
- 02:17 I'm going to hit my right mouse button on this list, and
- 02:20 this list sort of resembles the ribbon.
- 02:23 If I were to double click and open this, you see, options were there.
- 02:26 I can forward this group to someone else as a contact.
- 02:31 I can categorize and follow up, I can move this to a different folder.
- 02:35 I can send this to OneNote, I can delete this,
- 02:37 let's see I can create an email with this group create a meeting from this group.
- 02:42 So the point is a simple right click on top of this group,
- 02:45 it just gives you a lot of options.
- 02:47 Okay, what else can I do up here?
- 02:49 If I click on this particular one, pay attention to the ribbon,
- 02:52 we still have some ribbons up here.
- 02:54 We can use but I guess the biggest lesson is, if you want to create an email or
- 02:59 a meeting from this, simply right click or double click to go in there.
- 03:03 Or I wonder if we could try a click and drag.
- 03:06 So if I took this GoSkills Team and
- 03:09 dropped it onto email, I wonder if that would work.
- 03:13 Let go, there you go, GoSkills Team email, simply click and drag.
- 03:17 Notice on the GoSkills Team, if I send this right now,
- 03:20 they will all see GoSkills Team, but if I hit this plus sign, it warns me,
- 03:25 if you expand it everyone is going to see all the members.
- 03:28 Do I want to do that?
- 03:30 I'll hit OK, but generally I'll just send out the team name.
- 03:33 Okay, just so you know that a click and
- 03:35 drag allows you create a brand new email of that as well.
- 03:39 Thank you.
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