Drag & drop in distribution lists

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Mic - 01 Oct 2003 05:30 GMT

How can I drag & drop a bunch of contacts into a
distribution list? I have >500 contacts in my address
book and the various selection methods are very time
consuming (to put it mildly). Or, as an alternative, can
I select a bunch of contacts and just say "create a
distribution list"?

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Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] - 01 Oct 2003 11:16 GMT

I don't understand. The Distribution List dialog allows selection of
multiple contacts to add to the DL in one step. Why can't you use that?

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Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

> How can I drag & drop a bunch of contacts into a
> distribution list? I have >500 contacts in my address
> book and the various selection methods are very time
> consuming (to put it mildly). Or, as an alternative, can
> I select a bunch of contacts and just say "create a
> distribution list"?

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Mic - 02 Oct 2003 03:20 GMT

Have you tried that with lots of contacts? The advantage
of multiple views, categories, and various sort functions
in outlook make finding objects (mail messages,
tasks, ... and contacts of course) very easy. The "select
members" and "add new" dialogs are painful for more than
a small number of contacts (and try it with a corporate
db with upwards of 60K entries).

>-----Original Message-----
>I don't understand. The Distribution List dialog allows selection of
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
>.

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Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] - 02 Oct 2003 04:09 GMT

If you are adept at all these, why even use DL's? Very few of us even use
DL's. We use filtered views, categories and Contacts subfolders instead.

Signature

Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

> Have you tried that with lots of contacts? The advantage
> of multiple views, categories, and various sort functions
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> >
> >.

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mic - 02 Oct 2003 04:45 GMT

Uh... cause its a little difficult to send a message
to a view. And I've certainly never seen a way to put
a category in the "To" field of a message. Is it possible?

Seriously though... outlook (and office in general)
supports drag & drop into many different contexts.
DL's seems like an obvious place and its absense
is notable.

I poked around looking for a VB script that could
help with the creation of DL's, but only found
proprietary code used to generate mass mailings out
of a database.

I really just want something where I can select
multiple contacts (e.g. the families on my
softball team) and create a DL from the list, or pick
the one or two new contacts I just created and drag
them to an existing DL.

At this point I think you've answered my question
(meaning that there is no good way to create DLs). I'll
probably just write the VB code myself.

>-----Original Message-----
>If you are adept at all these, why even use DL's? Very few of us even use
[quoted text clipped - 23 lines]
>
>.

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Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] - 02 Oct 2003 11:06 GMT

Unfortunately, DL's remain unreliable, buggy, and poorly designed, which is
why most of use an alternative method for sending to multiple recipients.

Signature

Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

> Uh... cause its a little difficult to send a message
> to a view. And I've certainly never seen a way to put
[quoted text clipped - 55 lines]
> >
> >.

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michelle - 07 Oct 2003 21:53 GMT

Can I select a large number of addresses in a TO field (I
am on someone else's Distribution List) and drag and drop
those to a new Distribution List? Or am I stuck entering
each one as a contact, then recreating that Distribution
List?

>-----Original Message-----
>Unfortunately, DL's remain unreliable, buggy, and poorly designed, which is
[quoted text clipped - 60 lines]
>
>.

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Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] - 07 Oct 2003 22:02 GMT

There's no way in Outlook to go straight from a list of addresses into a DL.

Signature

Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

> Can I select a large number of addresses in a TO field (I
> am on someone else's Distribution List) and drag and drop
[quoted text clipped - 73 lines]
> >
> >.

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