How to add a group email in outlook

Setting up an email group for groups of people you contact on a regular basis can save you time, letting you focus on the message. When an email group is set up, you just have to enter that group name in the To field of a new message rather than entering the email address of each individual in the group the message is for. You can set up a new email group on the Home tab of the Ribbon toolbar.

1. Click the "Home" tab on the Ribbon toolbar, and then click "New Contact Group."

2. Enter a name for your contact group in the Name field.

3. Select the "Contact Group" tab and click "Add Members" to open a drop-down menu. Click to add members from your Outlook contacts or address book, or elect to add a person that doesn't appear in either your Outlook contacts or address book.

4. Double-click the names of individuals you want to add to your contact list if you elected to add individuals from either your Outlook contacts or from your address book. As you click them, their names display to the right of the Members field at the bottom of the dialog box that opens. Alternatively, if you elected to add a new email contact, the Add Members dialog box displays. Enter the email addresses you want to include in your contact list and click "OK."

5. Click "OK" when you're finished adding names to your new email group, and then click "Save & Close" to finish setting up the new email group.

• You can easily create a group email in Outlook (also known as a Contact Group) to make emailing a group of people more efficient and convenient. 
• A Contact Group is a distribution list that lets you add multiple names to an email message with a single entry on the To: line. 
• You can add multiple names to a Contact Group and give it a friendly name you can enter on the To: line of an email.  
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

If you find yourself sending email messages to the same group of people over and over – perhaps your boss and a handful of co-workers – you don't need to keep adding them to the To: line by hand every single time. Instead, create a Contact Group and simply send your message there. 

Here's how to create a group email in Outlook. 

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How to create a group email in Outlook 

A Contact Group, which is sometimes referred to as a "distribution list," is a set of names you can add to an email message with a single action. Before you can add one to an email, you need to create it.

1. Open Outlook and then click the Contacts icon at the bottom left of the window to switch to the Contacts view. 

2. In the ribbon bar, click "New Contact Group."

3. Give your Contact Group a name that's easy to remember in the Name field.

4. In the ribbon bar, click "Add Members" and then choose "From Outlook Contacts" from the drop-down menu. The Select Members dialog box should appear.

5. Double-click each name you want to add to your new Contact Group. You should see the names appear at the bottom of the dialog box. 

6. When you're done adding names to the group, click "OK."

7. You can also manually enter names to the Contact Group that aren't already in your Outlook contacts by clicking "Add Members" and choosing New E-mail Contact from the drop-down menu. 

8.  In the ribbon bar, click "Save & Close." 

How to send email to a group email in Outlook 

You can repeat those steps to create as many Contact Groups as you want. Just be sure to give them names you'll be able to easily recall so you can add them to email messages. To do that, just type the group's name in to To:, CC:, or BCC: line of an email message, in the same way as you would enter any name from your Outlook contacts. 

You might notice that a Contact Group has a small plus sign to its left. If you click the plus sign, you can "expand" the list to show you the names of all the people in the group. Be sure that you really want to do that, though, because once you expand a group in an email message, you can't compress all those names back down to just a single entry. 

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• How to use Bcc in Microsoft Outlook to send emails privately to multiple people

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Dave Johnson

Freelance Writer

Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.

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