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Send emails to multiple recipients using Microsoft groups in Outlook.

Quick reference

Send Mail to an Outlook Group

Learn how to use Outlook groups to send mail to multiple people and target specific people using @mentions.

When to use

We send email to an Outlook group when we want to have a conversation with a specific group of people.

Instructions

Sending an email can be made more efficient by using Microsoft 365 groups in Outlook. 

  • From the App Launcher, choose Outlook from the list
  • Click on Email in the left-hand menu
  • Scrolls down to the Groups section
  • Click on a group

Note: If you are using the desktop version of Outlook, the group settings can be found on the Home ribbon. 

Send an Email to Group Members

Groups in Outlook make it simple to email all group members. 

  • Click Send email

This will open up a new email addressed to the group. We can click on the plus (+) symbol to see the individual members of the group. We can also remove people from here by clicking on the cross (x). 

Send Email to other Groups

You do not have to be a member of a group to send an email to group members. Each group is assigned its own unique email address during setup. 

  • Click on the group profile icon to see the email address

  • Click the Copy icon
  • Open a new email
  • Press CTRL+V to paste the email address into the To field

The process is the same when using the desktop version of Outlook. 

@Mentions

It's worth noting that we can use @mentions in our emails. We @mention someone when we want to get their attention. 

To mention someone simply type the @ symbol in the body of the email and then start to type the person's name. 

If that person is within your organization, Outlook will recognize their name and we can simply select them from the list.

Once we have selected someone to mention, we can modify the mention.

For example, the default behavior is Outlook will display the person's full name. This can look a little formal. We can delete out the last name and it won't affect the functionality of the @mention. 

Hints & tips

  • We cannot @mention external users. 
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  • 00:03 Sending an email can be made a lot more efficient by utilizing Microsoft
  • 00:08 365 groups in Outlook.
  • 00:10 So let's start by opening up Outlook from the app launcher.
  • 00:15 And remember, we're working in the online version of Outlook here.
  • 00:19 It might be that you prefer to use the desktop version of Outlook, and
  • 00:23 that is absolutely fine.
  • 00:24 Everything that I'm going to show you translates across to the desktop version.
  • 00:29 But where possible, I will try and
  • 00:30 show you what I'm doing in both versions to accommodate everybody.
  • 00:34 Now, we want to work with emails, so we need to make sure that we have the email
  • 00:39 icon selected in that left-hand menu.
  • 00:41 And if you recall, we created groups.
  • 00:43 We can see groups down here.
  • 00:45 I have Sample Team Site and Project Alpha,
  • 00:48 that's the one that we created at the start of this course.
  • 00:51 And we know that if we click on Project Alpha,
  • 00:54 we can see different pieces of information.
  • 00:57 We can access the SharePoint site from here.
  • 01:00 We can send an email,
  • 01:01 we can see any emails that have been sent specifically to this group.
  • 01:05 Now, let's switch across to the desktop version of Outlook and
  • 01:09 take a look at what that looks like.
  • 01:11 And as you can see, it looks pretty similar.
  • 01:13 I have my groups at the bottom.
  • 01:15 Again, if I click on Project Alpha, you can see that I get something very similar.
  • 01:20 But all of the options that are available underneath those three dots in
  • 01:24 the online version, you're going to see in this group just here.
  • 01:27 So on the Home ribbon, we have a group called Project Alpha.
  • 01:31 This is where we can access Email, Calendar,
  • 01:34 we can jump across to the SharePoint site,
  • 01:36 we can go to the team notebook, and we can access our settings just here.
  • 01:40 So this is where we can add members, invite others, edit the group.
  • 01:45 So that is the difference between the online version and the desktop version.
  • 01:50 Let's jump back to online.
  • 01:52 Now, one of the advantages of groups is that it makes it super easy to send
  • 01:56 an email to all members of the group at the same time.
  • 02:00 So you can see here that we have a Send email link.
  • 02:03 So if I click on this, it's going to open up a brand new email, and
  • 02:07 you can see it's addressed to Project Alpha.
  • 02:10 Now, if I click the plus here, it's going to expand that out so
  • 02:14 I can see all of the members of Project Alpha.
  • 02:16 Of course, I can remove people by clicking on the cross,
  • 02:20 but this is a nice quick way to email all group members.
  • 02:23 Now, I'm not going to send this, so
  • 02:25 let's just discard it by clicking on the little trash can.
  • 02:28 Because it's important noting that you don't have to be a member
  • 02:32 of the group in order to send an email to it,
  • 02:35 because every single group is given its own individual email address.
  • 02:40 And we can find out what the email address is simply by clicking on
  • 02:44 the Project Alpha icon just here.
  • 02:47 You can see underneath About, we have Email.
  • 02:49 There is the email address.
  • 02:51 So if we say Copy email address, we could do that.
  • 02:55 We could then create a new email, and Ctrl+V to paste it in, and
  • 02:59 that's now addressed to the Project Alpha group.
  • 03:03 Let's take a look at that in the desktop version.
  • 03:05 Once again, we simply need to click on Project Alpha, and
  • 03:09 there we can see the email.
  • 03:11 And when we click on the link,
  • 03:12 it's going to create a new email address to that group.
  • 03:15 Now, another thing we can do,
  • 03:17 if we just create a new email by clicking on the New email button,
  • 03:21 is we can start to just type the name of the group that we want to send to.
  • 03:25 And you can see it's going to pop up underneath.
  • 03:27 We can select it, press tab, and we're now messaging that group.
  • 03:31 It's also worth noting that you can use at replies or
  • 03:34 at mentions in your email messages as well.
  • 03:37 So let's add a quick subject, we'll just say Project Meeting.
  • 03:43 I'm going to type a quick message, does anyone have the minutes from the meeting?
  • 03:48 Now, maybe Adele is the one who normally takes the minutes.
  • 03:52 So I could target this message towards her by adding in an at mention.
  • 03:57 And you've probably got used to using these in other applications,
  • 04:01 particularly if you post on social media, we're you're used to using at mentions on
  • 04:05 things like Twitter, Instagram, and other applications in Microsoft 365 like Teams.
  • 04:10 So I can say, @ symbol and then I can search for who I want.
  • 04:14 So if I'm looking for Adele, I can start to type her name.
  • 04:17 There she is, she is recognized.
  • 04:19 I can press the tab key to select her.
  • 04:21 It's also worth noting that it's going to put by default the full name in that
  • 04:26 at mention.
  • 04:27 But once you have it in there, you can actually delete out the last name to make
  • 04:31 it sound a little bit less formal and just have the first name.
  • 04:35 The at mention is still going to work.
  • 04:37 And the final point worth noting here is that at mentions feed through to other
  • 04:42 applications in Microsoft 365.
  • 04:44 So if you at mention somebody, they're going to see it in
  • 04:49 other parts of Microsoft 365 such as Microsoft Teams.

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