Loading a distribution list

[Stephen]

Outlook 2007
Vista (whatever version)


I have created a distribution list in Outlook 2007 and I would like to
load it with contacts that have an address in a certain town. I have
opened my distribution list and my address book and now I am dragging
contacts from my address book into my distribution list.


Oops! Except that I cannot because Microsoft dropped the ball and
failed to implement that basic and expected functionality.


So I opened my contacts in the main email window by going to this
option in the main menu: "Go--> Contacts". I am now able to view my
contacts as business cards and am dragging them to my distribution
list.


Oops! Except that I cannot because Microsoft dropped the ball and
failed to implement that and expected functionality.


So I decide to do it Microsoft's way. I open my distribution list and
clicked "Select Members" and now I'm presented with a list of my
contacts. Oops, it looks like I don't know who to add because the
addresses aren't shown. No problem! I'll just hit "More Columns" to
show more columns!

Oops! That didn't work. In fact, all of my columns are missing!

Well, I think I'll perform the search feature. I'll keep it on "More
Columns" and search for anything that contains the name of the town
I'm searching for!

"Your search yielded no results"

WTF?

Well, it looks like I've stumbled into the very reason why people hate
Microsoft with a passion. Their inept software engineers have found
yet another piece of functionality to F up.

 

[Gordon]

Outlook 2007
Vista (whatever version)


I have created a distribution list in Outlook 2007 and I would like to
load it with contacts that have an address in a certain town. I have
opened my distribution list and my address book and now I am dragging
contacts from my address book into my distribution list.


Oops! Except that I cannot because Microsoft dropped the ball and
failed to implement that basic and expected functionality.


So I opened my contacts in the main email window by going to this
option in the main menu: "Go--> Contacts". I am now able to view my
contacts as business cards and am dragging them to my distribution
list.


Oops! Except that I cannot because Microsoft dropped the ball and
failed to implement that and expected functionality.


So I decide to do it Microsoft's way. I open my distribution list and
clicked "Select Members" and now I'm presented with a list of my
contacts. Oops, it looks like I don't know who to add because the
addresses aren't shown. No problem! I'll just hit "More Columns" to
show more columns!

Oops! That didn't work. In fact, all of my columns are missing!

Well, I think I'll perform the search feature. I'll keep it on "More
Columns" and search for anything that contains the name of the town
I'm searching for!

"Your search yielded no results"

WTF?

Well, it looks like I've stumbled into the very reason why people hate
Microsoft with a passion. Their inept software engineers have found
yet another piece of functionality to F up.

Don't bother with Distribution Lists.
Set up a Category for the town and add that Category to all the required
Contacts.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Now you see why we've warned users here who read the group that DL's are a
deprecated feature and posted better alternatives for grouping recipients.

 

[Stephen]

Don't bother with Distribution Lists.

Set up a Category for the town and add that Category to all the required
Contacts.- Hide quoted text -

OK, so I started playing around with that but why are the "Next" and
"Previous" buttons always disabled on the window of my contact? It
sure would be nice to hit "Next" and set the person's category and
then hit "Next" to go to the next one.

 

[Gordon]

OK, so I started playing around with that but why are the "Next" and
"Previous" buttons always disabled on the window of my contact? It
sure would be nice to hit "Next" and set the person's category and
then hit "Next" to go to the next one.

View your Contacts by category, select all the contacts you want to add to
this new category, then right-click and choose "Categorize". It will add the
category to all the selected contacts at once...

HTH

 

[Stephen]

View your Contacts by category, select all the contacts you want to add to

this new category, then right-click and choose "Categorize". It will add the
category to all the selected contacts at once...

This category system seems nearly as poorly implemented as
distribution lists. For example, right now I'm viewing my contacts
and set it to "View--> Current View--> By Location" to list my
contacts by location, but does it organize my painstakenly inserted
entries by town name or zipcode? Of course not! The locations
available are "Country/Region" and "State". So here I have hundreds
of contacts all in the same state and according to this Microsoft app
everything is in the same region! I can't even find a way to manually
insert those columns. Am I missing something? Is there some option
staring me right in the face that I'm missing? It is very typical of
Microsoft to create a powerful tool and then intentionally omit basic
functionality to make it unuseable, is this another one of those cases?

 

[Stephen]

OK, I found it: nice and buried. How amazing that the brains at
Microsoft decided it was more important for me to know what COUNTRY my
contacts are in while finding zipcode and town so irrelevant that they
buried it.