thanks for your reply; microsoft outlook's contacts lets you create group
lists, or a group of email addresses under one heading (like "friends").  
select the group list (which is kept like an individual email in contacts)
and the email goes to everyone on the list.

when i put more than 50 addresses in a group list, outlook rejects it,
saying there are too many.

to get past this, i created a subfolder to contacts which has all the email
addresses i wanted in the group list.  i first tried to merge the list with a
word doc, but it prompts me to click yes for each of my 500 emails to allow a
program other than outlook to access email addresses in outlook.  if i click
no, it tells me i have a MAPI failure.  i'd like to avoid all that.

next i tried only working with outlook and no other programs.  any way i try
it, i get one of the two issues explained above.

is that clearer? is there a way to send more than 50 emails in one fell
swoop without having to babysit it?

thanks for your help.
shauna