I put all addresses into dist. lists & want them back in contacts

[Nora]

In Outlook 2007, I created two distribution lists using all of my contacts,
and then deleted all addresses from the address book contacts list. I
thought I could still send individual messages to members of the distribution
lists, but have not been able to do so. I think I need to reinstate all
addresses to the contacts list but don't know how to do that. Turns out I
don't really need the distribution lists after all -- I just want to be able
to send email messages to individual contacts again, as it was before I
created the two distribution lists. PLEASE HELP! Thank you.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

In Outlook 2007, I created two distribution lists using all of my contacts,
and then deleted all addresses from the address book contacts list. I
thought I could still send individual messages to members of the
distribution
lists, but have not been able to do so. I think I need to reinstate all
addresses to the contacts list but don't know how to do that. Turns out I
don't really need the distribution lists after all -- I just want to be able
to send email messages to individual contacts again, as it was before I
created the two distribution lists. PLEASE HELP! Thank you.

You have a bit of work to do. Save each DL as a text file. This will product
a tab-separated values files, one for each DL, which you should then edit to
remove the header records. You can then import those files into your
Contacts. You'll have to manually add all the other contact data, since DLs
contain only name and email address for each member.

I'm surprised you didn't test this prior to deleting the contacts.

 

[Gordon]

In Outlook 2007, I created two distribution lists using all of my
contacts,
and then deleted all addresses from the address book contacts list. I
thought I could still send individual messages to members of the
distribution
lists, but have not been able to do so. I think I need to reinstate all
addresses to the contacts list but don't know how to do that. Turns out I
don't really need the distribution lists after all -- I just want to be
able
to send email messages to individual contacts again, as it was before I
created the two distribution lists. PLEASE HELP! Thank you.

In addition to what Brian said, when you've got all the contacts back, use
Categories instead of Distribution Lists. MUCH easier.