Contacts & Categories

[Curious]

I would like to assign anywhere from one to several categories to each of my
1200 contacts, for purposes of exporting to Excel for mailmerges and mailing
labels. I need more than 25 categories (the number of allowed colors I see)
but I don't need them to be colored at all and it looks like I can create and
unlimited categories if not colored. Am I correct?

Also, is there an advantage to having all of my contacts in one big group
("Contacts") and using categories only to segment them, or should I also be
breaking my contacts into smaller groups? I don't want duplicate contacts and
am afraid if I group them, I won't know what group to look in to find
someone...Does anyone have experience with this? Thanks.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

My preference is a single contacts folder with categories assigned to the
contacts. You can assign multiple categories to contacts so selecting a
category, for instance, for a mail merge will always pull your contacts from
the same folder. Makes updating them easier as well.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, Curious asked:

| I would like to assign anywhere from one to several categories to
| each of my 1200 contacts, for purposes of exporting to Excel for
| mailmerges and mailing labels. I need more than 25 categories (the
| number of allowed colors I see) but I don't need them to be colored
| at all and it looks like I can create and unlimited categories if not
| colored. Am I correct?
|
| Also, is there an advantage to having all of my contacts in one big
| group ("Contacts") and using categories only to segment them, or
| should I also be breaking my contacts into smaller groups? I don't
| want duplicate contacts and am afraid if I group them, I won't know
| what group to look in to find someone...Does anyone have experience
| with this? Thanks.

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

I'm with Milly on this as well. 1 folder.

As far as exporting to Excel, if the only purpose is what you stated,
there's no need to add all those steps by using Excel. Select the Contacts
in Outlook and click Tools| Mailmerge and Word will automatically fire up
and you can do lables etc.

Regards

Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook

www.judygleeson.com
www.deskdoctors.com

Are you sick of bad email practice? Get a copy of my paper "Implementing
Email Policy" from the Desk Doctors website.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

You can have as many categories as you want/need and you can reuse colors -
or use the 'none' color on several.

Categories is almost always better than multiple folders. There are a very
few situations where multiple folders are better - syncing a limited subset
of contacts to a device or sharing contacts with other users and wanting to
keep some absolutely private.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



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