Creating a Contact or Distribution List in Microsoft Outlook is an efficient way to manage a group of contacts for sending emails quickly to multiple recipients. This is particularly useful for sending out newsletters, event invitations, or any communiqués that need to be distributed to a list of people at once. Here’s how you can do it:

To Create a Contact List:

1.Open Outlook and go to the ‘People’ tab at the bottom of the navigation pane.

2.Once you are in the People section, click on ‘New Contact Group’ located on the Home tab.

3.In the ‘Contact Group’ window that opens, type a name for your group in the ‘Name’ field.

4.To add members to your group, click on ‘Add Members’ and select from Outlook Contacts, Address Book, or add new E-mail addresses manually.

5.After selecting members, you can click on ‘Members ->’ button and then click OK.

6.With your group members added, click on ‘Save & Close’ in the Contacts Group window to save your distribution list.

To Create a Distribution List:

1.The process for creating a distribution list is similar to creating a contact list as it initially involves creating a contact group.

2.After saving your contact group (which essentially functions as a distribution list), you can send an email by going to your Home tab and clicking ‘New Email’.

3.In the New Email window, click on ‘To…’ button.

4.In the Select Names window that pops up, go under Address Book drop-down and select ‘Contacts’.

5.Look for the name of your Contact Group, highlight it by clicking on it once, and then click on ‘To->’, ‘CC->’, or ‘BCC->’, depending upon where you want to include the contact group.

6.Click OK after adding the group to your email as desired, compose your email and then send it.

That’s how you create and use a contact or distribution list in Outlook to streamline communication with multiple contacts at once.