Distribution lists

[Jeremy Schubert]

We use Exchange Server 2003 and Outlook 2003.
In Outlook, I created a folder under my contacts and called the folder "My
School".
Then I imported the email addresses of all the staff at my school, from
Excel, into the "My School" folder.
And then I created Distribtuion lists within that folder using those email
addresses.
The email addresses there are also on the GAL. So do I also need to keeop
the individual email addresses in the "My School" folder for the
distribution lists to work?

 

[Brian Tillman]

We use Exchange Server 2003 and Outlook 2003.
In Outlook, I created a folder under my contacts and called the
folder "My School".
Then I imported the email addresses of all the staff at my school,
from Excel, into the "My School" folder.
And then I created Distribtuion lists within that folder using those
email addresses.
The email addresses there are also on the GAL. So do I also need to
keeop the individual email addresses in the "My School" folder for the
distribution lists to work?

If the addresses are in the GAL, why did you import them at all?

I don't think you need to keep the addresses, since the DL is a stand-alone
entity, but don't ever use the "Update Now" button.

That said, if you have a folder containing the addresses, why create a DL?

 

[Jeremy Schubert]

If the addresses are in the GAL, why did you import them at all?

I don't think you need to keep the addresses, since the DL is a
stand-alone entity, but don't ever use the "Update Now" button.

That said, if you have a folder containing the addresses, why create a DL?

The folder contains all staff email addressess. I will be creating a DL for
the English dept, the math dept, the science dept...
What does the "Update Now" button do?
Thanks,

 

[Brian Tillman]

The folder contains all staff email addressess. I will be creating a
DL for the English dept, the math dept, the science dept...

Use categories instead of DLs.

What does the "Update Now" button do?

It goes back to the contact item from which the DL was made and tries to
update the information in the DL entry. If the contacts aren't in the
folder any more, it won't be able to find them. On top of that, "Update
Now" doesn't work all that well under the best of conditions.

 

[Jeremy Schubert]

Use categories instead of DLs.

Please explain the use of categories further. Do you mean View by
Categories? And the just select alll the members of what ever department we
want to send a message to?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Please explain the use of categories further. Do you mean View by
Categories? And the just select alll the members of what ever
department we want to send a message to?

Exactly.

 

[Bill]

Brian, is there any way to have sub-categories? For example, I have a
category for a club but i'd like to subdivide that into members, commmittee,
friends, sponsors, etc. Thanks...

 

[Brian Tillman]

Brian, is there any way to have sub-categories? For example, I have a

category for a club but i'd like to subdivide that into members,
commmittee, friends, sponsors, etc. Thanks...

Not really, but you can emulate that with category names that you
concatenate. For example, you can have categories "club", "clubmember",
"clubcomm", "clubfriend", "clubsponsor", etc. and assign the category "club"
to all who are associated with the club, then assign the additional
categories to the various collections. One collection will have "club" and
"clubmember", one "club" and "clubcomm" (and also probably "clubmember"),
and so on. When you group by category, one group will be "club" and show
everyone. One will be "clubmember" and show only the members. One will be
"clubcomm" and show only those on a committee, and exclude those members who
are not on committees. A particular contact will appear in each grouping
that's appropriate, appearing in multiple groupings. So, if you send a
message to, say, those in group "clubcomm", you'll get only those on a
committee, but if you send it to those in the group "clubmember", you'll
subsume those in the group "clubcomm" as well, since your committee members
are probably also club members. My personal opinion is that this is easier
to maintain than DLs, since I can see all the groupings at one time. It can
be easier still if you define views that show you particular categories
only, so you can have a view defined as "Club" that shows you only the
contacts where "Categories contains 'club'" so that you can switch to that
view and see only those contacts involved in the club, hiding the rest.