aware said:
What is the limitations of an Outlook 2003 Distribution List? How many
addresses
can you have in a single DL, or is it a Character limitation?
Are you using Exchange as your mail server? If so, read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/238569
If using Exchange, you can nest distribution lists (DLs), like having
one master DL in which other smaller DLs are added. Since you could
have, say, 100 nested DLs in a master DL and each nested DL might have,
say, 100 members (pointers to contact records), that would give you
10,000 contacts within the one master DL. Of course, you could also
nest DLs in the nested DLs for an even larger size.
When Exchange is not used, the limit is much higher (but I don't know
what it might be other than to guess it is probably around 16K or 64K
entries). I'm sure there is a limit even if only on the number of
entries as an index range has a limit imposed based on the size of the
integer allowed to address that range. Read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/208480
That was for the old ANSI format for the .pst message store file. The
limits may be much larger for the newer Unicode format.
However --- You had better check on what is the maximum number of
recipients allowed per e-mail by whomever is your e-mail provider.
Having nested DLs with a capacity of 10,000 contacts in total is
meaningless when your e-mail provider enforces a maximum of, say, 50
recipients per e-mail. When you use a DL, that list gets expanded
during the send operation. The e-mail client sends a RCPT-TO command
for each recipient in the [final] list which is followed with a single
DATA command to specify the content of the message. I really doubt your
non-business e-mail account permits you to send to 10,000 recipients per
e-mail. You probably can't even send to more than 100, and maybe less,
for a single e-mail.
Most times when someone asks this question, they are interested in
sending e-mails to thousands upon thousands of recipients; i.e., they
are sending bulk e-mails or spam. Outlook is an e-mail client and not
designed to be a listserver (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listserve) or
a bulk mailing program.
