I often hear people comment that Outlook is too complicated or inadequate to use for mailings. Although group mailings may not be the program's strength, there are many ways in which Outlook can easily send email to many recipients. (Includes online tutorial.)

For example, most people know that from any Contact view they can click a Contact name and then click the New Message to Contact toolbar button. Similarly, the same steps work if you press and hold the CTRL key while selecting more contacts. All the highlighted contacts will be included in the email. Those are two simple examples.

Using Views and Categories to Define Outlook Recipients

Often times, people have emails they need to send to a large group and using the CTRL key is labor intensive as you often have to scroll through numerous entries. The trick to sending a group mail is to start with a good view. Outlook has done a good job by providing some predefined views containing sub-groups. A good example is the View by Company that groups and sorts your contacts by company. You can collapse or expand the company name to see the related contacts. This view is ideal if you need to send an email to contacts at XYZ Company. Using the same procedure as above, you click the header for XYZ Company and click the New Message to Contact button. Also, you could include several companies using CTRL key on the other company headers.

Another useful and overlooked grouping is Categories. Outlook allows you to assign multiple categories to a contact record using the Categories button in the lower right of the contact record. We've know people that set up categories for such groupings as "alumni", "prospects", "press", "church", "family", "major accounts" etc. Outlook has a defined list of categories, but you can customize this list suit your needs.

To send an email to contacts within a category,

1. Click the Contacts button on your Outlook bar.

2. From the View menu, select Current View.

3. On the pop out menu, select By Category.

4. Click the category header for the group you need. (Category headers are the rows that have the + at the beginning.)

5. On the toolbar, click the New Message to Contact button.

• 2-Minute Online Email Tutorial