The contact group is renamed which is earlier known as the distribution list among users.
A contact group is an essential tool for people working within large organizations where they may need to communicate with hundreds of people.
Setting up an email system to automatically send identical messages to multiple recipients can save time and effort in the long run.
Depending on the number of contacts, the initial setup may take some time.
Once the system is up and running, it can take away the tediousness of manually sending the same email to multiple people.
Despite its flaws, the contact group feature in Outlook can be useful. This article will provide tips on how to manage it effectively and how to add/remove distribution lists in Outlook.
How to Add Members to Outlook Group?
Adding members to Outlook Distribution List, from your existing contacts is very simple. You just need to follow a few steps to edit your contact list.
- Open Outlook Going to the People section in Outlook and head into the Contacts tab.

- You see all related contact lists, select the one which consists of the distribution list you need to add the contact.
- On the right navigation section, you will get the list of emails added to your contact and contact group.
- Under Contact >> Home >> On the top right corner of the screen, you will find the search people bar, Type the name of your distribution list/group to quickly find the group or scroll down to see that group, which is quite time-consuming.

- You address book option also, which also brings you to the search bar, type the name of the group and find it quickly.

- Once you find it, double-click on it, which consist of a list of contact of that contact group. Now it’s time to add the contact to it.

- Click Add member from the contact group ribbon, from the drop-down list, three options are available, From Outlook contacts, From Address Book & New Email contact.

- To add existing contacts from your Outlook Contact list, choose the contacts you want to add to the distribution list (hold Ctrl to select more than one contact), then select Members. Select OK to return to the distribution list.
- Once your contact is added you can simply, click Update now then click save and close that will close the window automatically.

This is a simple method to add a contact to your existing contact group in the Outlook application.
Remove Members from Outlook Group
Adding and Removing go hand in hand, in the above method you click add members to add the new contact to your contact list, select the member or you can also click the CTRL key to select multiple members from the list, and click remove the member.
The selected member was removed from the list. click Save and Close from the top left corner of the screen.

Combine Multiple Contact Group
Some users prefer to add those people in the contact group with another group in Outlook, in that case, you can easily merge multiple groups into one.
Open Outlook contacts from the home tab and click on New Contact Group, which will open a separate window, you must name the group and add Outlook Distribution/Contact group from the list.
Click Add members, instead of selecting the members one by one, select the group directly using the Ctrl key and click members, which will add the names to the list, and click OK.
Now your New Group with both the distribution list is created which consists of all the members of both groups.

That way you can easily create a new group or there is another temporary way to send emails to all the members without creating a new group.
During creating a new mail message you can simply type the name of all the groups into To: CC: or BCC, when you click on the plus sign of both the group, all the email addresses expand, and you can cross-check the email address of all the members, you can also add the email of the member in addition to which is not available in the group.
Create the email message, type the subject and message in the message body and click send that email to all the members.

FAQs: What if a member is added to both groups? – The best part is if accidentally one of your contacts is available in both groups, the email message will be delivered to that contact only once.
How to Add Emails to an All-Contact list in Outlook.com
Do you have a group of contacts that you email frequently? If so, you can add them to a contact group on Outlook.com.
This will allow you to email all of the contacts in the group with just a few clicks. Here’s how to add emails to a contact group on Outlook.com.
- Step 1: – Open Outlook.com, Select the People icon in the upper-left corner of the screen.

- Step 2: – There are lots of options from the left navigation section, which consist of All contacts & All contacts List.
All contacts have an individual list of contacts, and All contact lists consist of groups of contact.

- Step 3: – Under the title if you need to add individual contact to the contact list, select the group and click edit.

- Step 4: – Edit Contact List window appears, you can change the email address in the contact list, you must remove the old email address and add the new one. You can also change the Contact list name.
- Step 5: – Type the name and email address of the person and click add, that email address will be added to the group.

- Click Save to make the changes, now onwards your email address is added to the group.
Remove Emails to an All-Contact list in Outlook web
Step 1: – Open Outlook web >> Select the People icon in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Step 2: – Click All contacts List >> Select the group and click edit from the upper portion of the screen.
Step 3: – Edit contact list window appears >> Scroll down, select the email address you want to remove from the list and click the cross sign.
Step 4: – Click Save to make all the changes.
How to Rename Distribution List in Outlook?
To rename a distribution list in Outlook, first open the Contacts folder. Then, open the distribution list you want to rename.
Next to the distribution list name, click the Rename button. Finally, enter the new name for the distribution list and click the Save button.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How to identify the contact group from the contact list in the Outlook application?
Outlook web as we learn above consists of a separate section All contacts & All contacts List, all contacts consist of the individual member and All contact lists consist of contact/Distribution Groups.
In the case of the Outlook application, there is no such separate section, all the contacts and groups are available in one list.
You can easily point out the group in the outlook application. You can distinguish between individual contacts and contact groups by the icons that appear to the left of the names in the List view.
The card icon represents individual contacts, and the people icon represents contact groups.

Another method is to collapse all the contact groups, click view >> Expand/Collapse >> Collapse all groups.

That will show you only the heading, in my case I have two groups, expand that by clicking the arrow icon and you will get your groups.

How to Share a Contact Group in Outlook?
It’s easy to share the entire contact group in Outlook with other Outlook users. Here’s how:
- In Outlook, click the Contacts icon.
- Right, Click the contact group you want to share.
- Click on the Forward Contact >> As an Outlook contact.
- In the Share Group dialog box, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share the group with.
- Click Send.
That’s all there is to it! Now your contacts are available to everyone in the group.

Wrap Up
In conclusion, before you can distribute a contact group, you need to first create a distribution group. You cannot allocate a group until it contains at least one distribution group.
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