Below UNMC Information Technology Services offers tips about groups in Microsoft Outlook.
“I have several large distribution groups in Lotus Notes. Do I have to re-create them in Outlook?”
In some cases, you can copy and paste the addresses from Lotus Notes. If your groups contain Internet-style addresses (johndoe@unmc.edu), you can copy and paste the addresses into an Outlook group.
If they contain the Lotus Notes format (first lastname/dept/unmc/unebr), they will not work in Outlook and you will need to re-create those by selecting the names from Outlook’s global address book.
To copy and paste names, do the following:
- Open your Lotus Notes group and click and drag over the names and press “Ctrl C” to copy. (It is best to select only those names with internet format — username@domain.)
- From your Outlook contacts view, click New Contact Group (or “distribution list” for earlier versions of Outlook).
- Give the group a name.
- Click “Add Members” (or “Select Members” in Outlook 2007), then paste (“Ctrl V”) the names in the “members” section (toward the bottom of the window in 2010 and 2007). Click “OK.” Email addresses with Lotus Notes or formats not recognized by Outlook will give an error message.
This process will not work to paste into Public Distribution lists. There is a limit of 150 per distribution list (see below).
I received a message when I pasted names into an Outlook group that I exceeded the limit?
Outlook has a limit of about 100 names in a distribution list. You can, however, nest several distribution lists into one large list. Each distribution list would count as one name.
For example, you could name one large group “Faculty,” which could contain several smaller groups called facultyA-F, facultyG-L, facultyM-R, facultyS-Z, etc. NOTE: Make sure each group had 100 or fewer names.
For more e-tips, go to the ITS’ LearnIT blog.
View a list of Outlook training sessions and recordings of previous sessions.