TOC
BACK
FORWARD
HOME

10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0

- Lesson 6 -
Using Distribution Lists

 

In this lesson, you learn how to use distribution lists to send messages to a group of recipients.

Creating Personal Distribution Lists

A distribution list is a collection of addresses that are grouped together for some logical reason. The distribution list appears as a single entry in an address book and is treated as a single recipient. When you send a message to that recipient, the distribution is automatically expanded to include every recipient on the list.

The administrators of your Microsoft Exchange Server system may create global distribution lists for everyone to use. These lists appear in the Global Address List. The Global Address List can include multiple distribution lists.

If you often send messages to the same group of people, you should create a personal distribution list (PDL). A PDL appears as one recipient in your Personal Address Book. Distribution lists are often used in the following types of situations:

  • You have a group of employees that reports to you, and you frequently send messages to them.

  • You are part of a team for a project, and all team members frequently exchange messages.

  • You regularly send reports to certain management people.

To create a personal distribution list, follow these steps:

1. Choose Tools, Address Book (or click the Address Book toolbar button) to display the Address Book dialog box.

2.
In the Address Book dialog box, open the File menu and choose New Entry (or click the New Entry toolbar button). The New Entry dialog box appears (see Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 Personal Distribution Lists are a type of entry that can be added to an address book.

3. From the list of entry types, choose Personal Distribution List. Then click OK. The New Personal Distribution List Properties dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 6.2.

Figure 6.2 The New Personal Distribution List Properties dialog box.

4. Type a name for the distribution list in the Name text box. (It's helpful to give your list a name that reminds you of the membership, such as "Project X team.")


Friendly Reminder Click the Notes tab to add reminders or comments to yourself about this list's origin and use.


5.
To add recipients to the distribution list, click Add/Remove Members. The Edit New Personal Distribution List Members dialog box appears (see Figure 6.3). By default, the Global Address List is displayed on the left side of the dialog box.

Figure 6.3 The Edit New Personal Distribution List Members dialog box.

6. (Optional) To display your Personal Address Book instead of the Global Address List, click the Show Names from the drop-down arrow at the top of the dialog box and select Personal Address Book.

7.
In the address list on the left side of the dialog box, double-click names you want to add to your personal distribution list. The names then appear in the list on the right side of the dialog box.

8.
When you finish adding to your personal distribution list, click OK.


Deleting Members from PDL To delete a member of a personal distribution list, highlight the user's name and press the Delete key. If there is more than one user in your list, be sure to delete the semicolon after the user's name as well.

After you create your personal distribution list, it appears as a recipient in your Personal Address Book (see Figure 6.4). As you can see, the name of the distribution list appears in bold type, and an icon showing two people appears to the left of the entry.

Figure 6.4 Distribution lists are displayed with the other entries in your Personal Address Book.

Add Lists to Lists

You can create as many personal distribution lists as you need, and you can even add existing distribution lists to new lists. If, for example, you have a personal distribution list for all the members of a project team, and you are creating a list of people to whom you send periodic summary reports about the project, you can add the project team distribution list to the new list. That way you don't have to individually enter each recipient of the project team when creating the new list. In computer jargon, including a list in a list is called nesting. (Microsoft Exchange Server supports nested lists.)

Using Global and Personal Distribution Lists

After you create a distribution list, it appears as one recipient in an address book and is treated exactly the same as an individual recipient. To send a message to all the people on the list, you just select the name of the distribution list as the recipient for a message. And you don't have to worry about the individual members of the distribution list receiving the message, because Microsoft Exchange Server will take care of it for you.


Adding a Partial PDL If you want to add all but a few members of a Personal Distribution List, follow the steps you normally would to add a PDL to the recipients list. But after you select the PDL in the Address Book dialog box, click the Properties button instead of the To: button. The Personal Distribution List dialog box appears, showing several new buttons: To, Cc, and Bcc (if this field is displayed in your New Message window). Choose the recipients you would like to add and click the appropriate button. Then click OK to return to the Address Book dialog box. There you'll see that the names you selected have been added to the recipient list in the section corresponding to the button you used to add them.

If you're not sure who is included in a distribution list (especially one in the Global Address List, because you didn't create it), you can click the name of the distribution list in any dialog box or window in which the list is displayed, and then choose Properties. You might do this while you are creating a new message or examining an address book, for example.

While viewing the Properties of a personal distribution list, you can add or delete members at any time–even while you are creating a message. Note, however, that you cannot change distribution lists in the Global Address List because the system administrators control them.

In this lesson, you learned how to create and use distribution lists. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to create and send a message.

TOCBACKFORWARDHOME


©Copyright, Macmillan Computer Publishing. All rights reserved.