Creating Distribution Lists in Outlook

These basic instructions came from Microsoft

  1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Distribution List (DL).
  2. In the Name box, type a name.
  3. Click Select Members.
  4. In the Show names from the list, click the address book that contains the e-mail addresses you want in your distribution list.
  5. In the Type name or select from list box, type a name you want to include. In the list below, select the name, and then click Members. Do this for each person you want to add to the distribution list, and then click OK.
  6. If you want to add a longer description of the distribution list, click the Notes tab, and then type the text. The distribution list is saved in your Contacts folder by the name you give it.

Please note that each DL has a limited size that restricts it to a few hundred entries, which may not be enough for some. In cases such as this, it’s recommended that you instead use a database in either Excel or Access. This not only is much easier to update but you can then use this for other mail merge options in Word, for example. You can either copy/paste these names into the TO field (limited to about 1000 addresses) or create an email merge from within Word.

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