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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, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download this lesson’s exercise file.

Contact Groups aka Distribution Lists
157 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 

  1. Click New Contact Group
      
     
  2. Name the Group and click “Add Members”:

     
  3. Select and Double Click the names to be added to the Group:

     
  4. If you need to Remove someone, open the Group and select “Remove Member”

     
  5. 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.
        
     
  6. When the new Group Contact is created, Right Click it for options to use it, i.e. Create an Email or Meeting:

     
  7. 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.
     
  8. To Delete a Contact Group,          
    1. Click the Contact Group card and press delete, OR
    2. Open the Contact Group card and click Delete Group
        
       
  9. In a new email, click the To: line and notice the icon beside the Contact Group compared to the individual Contact files:
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  • 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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