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So you have several categories set up in Microsoft Outlook Contacts and every time you want to send an email to that group of contacts, you go into the contacts menu, search for the category then use the action tool to create a new email message to send to the group. Good for you. But, wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier if you could just select the list from within the email address field itself?

You could off course set up your distribution list the traditional way by selecting each contact one at a time to be added to the list but, who has time for that?????

Here are the steps (in Microsoft Outlook 2007 and similarly in 2003) to create a distribution list using your contact categories in Microsoft Outlook:

• Select CONTACTS
• Select CATEGORIES
• Once the contacts in the selected category is displayed, place cursor to the right of the first record then hold down the shift key. At the same time, select each of the records in that category until you reach the last record. (You can do this by holding down the left click on you mouse or clicking the down arrow on your keyboard).
  
• Select ACTION from the menu bar at the top (the following image relates to this and the next step)
  
  
• Select Create new message to contact
  
• Once new email message opens up, highlight all of the email address in the TO: field then right click on your mouse and select COPY (once you have done this do not press the right click on your mouse again until instructed to do so below)





• Click on the Microsoft Icon at left



• Under Create New Outlook Item, select Distribution List</li>
• Once the distribution list screen opens, click the Select Members icon near the top of the screen



• Once the select members screen opens, place your cursor in the Members field near the bottom then right click and select paste.



• After you paste, you will see a list of the contacts you included.



• Name your list using the Name field at top of the list.



• Select the Save and Close icon

To test the successful set up of your distribution list:

• Open a new email message
• In the TO: field, type in the name of your distribution list (you can also select the list by clicking on the TO button)
• Once the TO field is populated with the distribution list, click the small cross included in the distribution list name to see all of the contacts included. (You do not have to do this every time – this is just to test the set up so you can see all of the contacts in the list)

Congratulations! You are ready to organize your email contacts into distribution lists for efficient email messaging!

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