Address Book group from an email distribution list
Can I take an email distribution list, and from that, easily create a Group in Address Book, so that I can send email to that same group again?
What's "an email distribution list"?
9 replies
When I say, "Email distribution list," I am referrring to a group of email addresses (might have names if they are already in my Address Book) that I am sending an email to. For example, I might have a certain group of people at work who I email about a certain project. They are not in any particular group, but now I want to have them be a group that I can send future email to, as well. Also, there are sometimes emails that I receive, which have a number of emails cc'd on, and I might want to create a group out of them.
You can create a Group from entries in Address Book.
You can add an address from a message in Mail to Address Book.
As for the rest, I'm afraid I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to achieve.
I totally understand what you are trying to achieve and I have the same problem! YOu used to be able to just drag that group of emails into a group in address book, but the s-called "upgrade" to Lion now does not allow that. I have not found a way. Has anyone else?
I have found that you can create a group in Address Book, and you can add email addresses to Address Book by right-clicking them in Mail, so that you can then add them to your group in Address Book (does this seem crazy to anyone else, compared to how one-step easy it should be?).
However, it used to be that once you had a group in Address Book, you just had to type the name of the group in the address field in a new message for it to expand the list of addresses in that group into the field. But that's not working for me anymore.
Is there a step I'm missing?
Agree with John.
Additionally, I wonder why one cannot simply create an Address Group (or Email Distribution List) by simply:
a) creating a Group in Address Book by naming the new Group (I did that),
b) highlighting any email list of one's choosing, such as an email from a group of friends that you would like to use to load your new Group (did that too),
c) and copy/paste or dragging that group of emails into the Address Group (why can't one do that??)
Maybe I'm saying the same thing as John?
Is there some other easy method, other than creating missing addresses one by one in Address Book, and moving each one by one to the Group?? Cumbersome!
You used to be able to do that until they eliminated it as part of the Lion so-called "upgrade". So many features were lost from address book and ical that I can't even believe it.
I talked to Apple tech support and they confirmed that that is no longer possible. The only way is to add emails one by one to your address book and THEN, add people one by one to a group! Absurd!
He did suggest a workaround which is to select all the email addresses from your outgoing email, copy them into TextEdit and then you can paste that list back into an email in the future. Cumbersome, but better than the one by one method. Come on Apple! We expect more from you!!!
Thanks, Marty. I can hardly believe this is true, and thought I must be missing something - but apparently not.
I don't trust the recommended workaround, as some in the group are careless in maintaining current email addresses.
I paid for an upgrade and find myself moving backwards.
I know! and in iCal many things like this. You have to double click and open a new event to tell it which calendar and so forth - more cumbersome than before Lion, etc......
Address Book group from an email distribution list