How To Create And Use Groups In Outlook Express

Creating and Sending Email to a Group in Outlook Express.

Guide Overview

The purpose of this guide is to teach you how to create an email 'Group' (or mailing list) in Outlook Express and use it to make emailing to multiple addresses easier.
As an example we will assume Ted, Sue, Bob and Alice are members of your Karate club's regional championship winning Kata Team and you are responsible for notifying the team about training times.
To complicate things Alice has told you she does not want any of the other Team members to know her email addres.


Creating a Group

• Open the Outlook Express email client.
• On the Toolbar click on the 'Addresses' button, this opens a new 'Address Book' window.
  
  
  
  
• In the new window click on the 'New' button, and from the options that appear choose 'New Group'. This will open a 'Properties' dialog box for a new Group.
  
  
  
  
• Type in a Group name, in our example this will be Kata Team as shown.
• The 'Group Details' tab (arrowed) can be used to enter contact information for the Group, such as address, telephone number etc. if applicable.

Now you are ready to add "Members" (email addresses) to the group.
To keep Alice's email address confidential you will need to create a second Group in the same way, with a name which indicates the email addresses contained are not to be distributed. In this example it is called Confidential.


Adding Members to a Group
As it says in the Group 'Properties' window there are three ways you can add 'Members' to a group, either:

• Selecting them from existing entries in the address book using the 'Select Members' button, or:
• Make a new entry in the address book which will be added to the Group using the 'New Contact' button, or:
• Type in a name and email address which will be added to the group but not to the Address Book.
  
  

In our example we add the names and email addresses of Ted, Sue and Bob to the 'Kata Team' group and Alice's name and email address to the 'Confidential' group.


Mailing to a Group
In the main window click the 'Create Mail' button, this opens a 'New Message' window as usual.
Click on the address book icon beside the 'To:' button (arrowed) to open a 'Select Recipients' dialog box.



In the 'Select Recipients' dialog there is a list of your contacts shown, along with a search field to help you find a contacts name. One way to quickly find the 'Kata Team' entry is to click on any name in the 'Contacts' list and type "k" or "ka", unless you have a huge contact list the 'Kata Team' group should now be in the list.

• Highlight the 'Kata Team' entry (item ).
• Click the "To:->" button (item ) to put the 'Kata Team' in the 'To:' 'Message recipients' box.
  
  
  
  
• Scroll or search the Contacts list to find the 'Confidential' group.
• Highlight the 'Confidential' entry (item )
• Click the "Bcc:->" button (item ) to put them in the 'Bcc:' 'Message recipients' box.
  
  
  
  
• Click 'OK'.
  
  
  
• The 'Select Recipients' dialog closes returning you to the 'New Message' window where you see "Kata Team" in the "To:" box and "Confidential" in the "Bcc:" box.
• As with any email, enter a message subject (item ).
• Enter the message to be sent to the Kata team (item ).
• Click the 'Send" button on the toolbar. (item ).
  
  

The notification for Friday training will be sent to the members of the Kata Team with all members email addresses visible except for Alice's.
If all the team's addresses were to be confidential then the whole Group could be put in the "Bcc:" box. When the email is sent it will then appear to be sent "To: undisclosed-recipients".

Edited by Grinler, 17 April 2012 - 09:58 AM.