Mailing List Instructions: Microsoft Outlook

If you keep your contact list in Outlook, use the following instructions to create a file that you can send with your letter.

Create a category for your mailing list

If you already have a way of selecting your newsletter mailing list, you can skip down to the next section. You can also skip this section if you want to send your letter to everyone in your Contacts folder (or some other folder).

Go to your Contacts folder.
Click the "Organize" button in the toolbar.
Create a new category called "Send Newsletter".
Select all of the contacts you want to receive your newsletter (hold down the Control key and click to select multiple contacts).
Click the "Add" button.

Export a mail merge data file

Note: Outlook 2000's "Export" function doesn't seem to have any way of getting the actual mailing address into a file. If you know of a way to do this, please let me know so I can update these instructions.

Go to your Contacts folder.
Open the "View" menu, then choose "Current View" and "By Category".
Look for a line that says "Categories: Send Newsletter (___ items)" and single-click it so that it is highlighted.
Open the "Tools" menu, then choose "Mail Merge".
Select "Only selected contacts".
Select "All contact fields".
Check the box to the left of "Permanent file:".
Click the "Browse..." button.
Enter a name for the file (e.g. mailing_list.doc) and press Enter.
Click "OK". This will create the file and load Word.
Close Word – we don't actually want to do a mail merge; we just want the contact file that was created at the same time.

Send the file with your letter

When you send your letter to us, send the mailing_list.doc file as well.