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How to Make and Manage Contact Groups in Microsoft Outlook

Contact groups, formerly known as distribution lists, allow you to easily send emails to multiple recipients by putting their email addresses into a group. This can save you time when emailing teams, departments, friends and family, clients, or other common groups.

Creating a New Contact Group

Follow these steps to make a new contact group in Outlook:

  1. Open Outlook and click on People in the bottom left navigation pane.
  2. Go to the Home tab at the top and click on New Contact Group.
  3. A dialog box will open. Give your new contact group a name at the top, like “Marketing Team” or “Family”.
  4. Click Add Members. You can now add members from your existing Outlook contacts, your address book, or create new email contacts.
  5. Select contacts to add and click Add to Members. Continue adding all the members you want to include.
  6. When finished, click Save & Close at the bottom.

Your new contact group is now created and ready to use for sending group emails!

Adding a Contact Group to an Email

Here is how you can use your newly created contact group when sending emails:

  1. In Outlook, click New Email.
  2. In the To field, start typing the name of your contact group. It should pop up as a suggestion. Select it.
  3. The contact group name and all member email addresses will be added to the recipient field.
  4. Compose and send your email as normal. It will be sent to everyone in the group.

Editing a Contact Group

You may need to make changes to contact groups over time by adding or removing members. Here’s how:

  1. In Outlook’s People section, double click on the contact group you want to edit.
  2. Click Add Members to add more contacts to the group.
  3. To remove members, select them from the list and click Remove Member.
  4. When finished editing, click Save & Close.

Deleting a Contact Group

Don’t need a particular contact group anymore? It’s easy to delete:

  1. In the People section, right-click the contact group you want to delete.
  2. Select Delete from the menu.
  3. Click Yes in the confirmation dialog box.

The contact group will be permanently deleted.

Creating Contact Categories

In addition to contact groups, you can organize your contacts using color categories:

  1. Right-click on a contact and select Categorize.
  2. Pick a color category you want to assign the contact to.

You can assign multiple categories to the same contact. Then you can sort and view by category.

Importing Contacts

If you have contacts stored in another application, you can import them:

  1. Go to File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
  2. Select Import from another program or file and click Next.
  3. Choose the type of file you want to import from and follow the instructions.

This will copy contacts over to your Outlook address book in bulk.

Exporting Contacts

To add your Outlook contacts to another app:

  1. Go to File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
  2. Select Export to a file and click Next.
  3. Pick Comma Separated Values (Windows) and click Next.
  4. Select which folder’s contacts to export and choose a save location.
  5. Click Finish when complete.

You’ll now have a CSV file containing your Outlook contacts to import into other apps.

Contact Management Tips

  • Review contact groups regularly and remove inactive members or email addresses.
  • Categorize key contacts for easier management.
  • Consolidate multiple entries for the same contact using the Find Duplicates tool.
  • Sync your Outlook contacts to your mobile device so you can access them on the go.
  • Back up your Outlook data periodically to avoid losing contacts due to computer issues or hardware failures.

Using Outlook’s contact groups, categories, and other features allows you to organize all your important contacts for efficient email communication. Follow the instructions in this article to create, manage, and back up your contacts.

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