Sending Your E-mail Distribution List to Someone in Microsoft Outlook

Sending Your E-mail Distribution List to Someone in Microsoft Outlook
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It is not hard to send your e-mail distribution list to someone in Microsoft Outlook. All you need to do is compose an e-mail and select the e-mail distribution list that you intend to send. Microsoft Outlook automatically adds the e-mail distribution list as an attachment to that e-mail so that you can send it to anyone you want. The following explains how to send e-mail distribution list to someone in Microsoft Outlook.

  1. Click on New E-mail in Office 2010 and Office 2007 to open the compose e-mail window. For Microsoft Outlook 2003, click on File -> New -> E-mail.

  2. In the Compose E-mail window, compose the message or leave it blank - as you wish. Type a subject for the message. Type the recipient’s address or select it from the drop down list in the To field.

  3. To add the e-mail distribution list to someone in Microsoft Outlook, click on Attach Item. In the drop-down list, select Outlook Item.

  4. In the window that appears, select Contacts. Click on Contacts only once so that the contents of the folder appear in the bottom. If you double-click on Contacts, only the first item from the Contacts folder will be added to the e-mail as an attachment. Once you click on Contacts, the lower part of the window will display all your contacts stored in Microsoft Outlook.

Fig 2 - Send Email Distribution List to Someone In Outlook - Select All Contacts

  1. Scroll down to the e-mail distribution list that you want to send to someone. To select more than one e-mail distribution list, press and hold down the CTRL key and select other e-mail distribution lists. Note that e-mail distribution lists in this view will be presented in bold characters with an icon as shown in the image below.

Fig 3 - Send Email Distribution List to Someone In Outlook - Select Distribution List

  1. After selecting the e-mail distribution list(s) you wish, click on the OK button. This will close the Attach Item window and will also show the e-mail distribution list(s) in the attachments section of the Compose E-mail window.

Fig 4 - Compose Mail Window with Distribution List as Attachment

  1. Click on Send.

This explains how to send your e-mail distribution list to someone in Microsoft Outlook. Note that the recipient will be able to merge the e-mail distribution list to his or her Microsoft Outlook contacts. When the recipient double clicks on the attachment, it will open up in the Outlook format. The person will be able to click on Save and Close to merge the e-mail distribution list into his or her Outlook contacts folder.

Alternate Method to Send E-mail Distribution List to Someone in Microsoft Outlook

Another, simple method to send an e-mail distribution list to someone in Microsoft Outlook is through the Contacts view.

  1. Click on the contacts icon at the bottom-left corner of Microsoft Outlook to open the Contacts view.

  2. Select the e-mail distribution list that you wish to send to some other person.

  1. Right-click and select Forward Contact.

  2. You will get two options: Send as Outlook Contact and Forward as Text Message. The first option allows you to send the e-mail distribution list as an attachment to e-mail. The second option sends the distribution list as a text message to the recipient’s phone. You may have to configure your Microsoft Outlook in the latter case. It is easy as you will get a wizard that will walk you through the configuration.

  3. If you select Send as Outlook Contact, a new e-mail window will open. Type in the subject, recipient’s name and add details. Click on Send to send the e-mail.

References

Screenshots by Author, courtesy of MS Outlook 2010

This post is part of the series: Outlook 2010 - A Tutorial

This series on Outlook 2010 offers you a tutorial on how to optimize the email client . It tells you how to combine e-mail accounts, how to export contacts and distribution lists, creating accounts the easy way and more.

  1. Microsoft Outlook for Email - A Tutorial
  2. Setting up More Than One Account on Microsoft Outlook
  3. How to Send E-mail Distribution List to Someone in Microsoft Outlook
  4. Move Outlook Book in Outlook to Win7
  5. How to Backup Outlook Email Accounts