creating mailing list in mail/address book?

[pna]

Hi,

I'm new to using Os X Mail as my primary email application. I've always used either pine for console based, or thunderbird. I'm trying to make a group mailing list for a university class I'm TA-ing for, and have a few questions.

1 - First off, I gather that all (or almost all) of Mail's addressing functions really come about through the Address book, right? So I should need to create a mailing list (group list) in the address book if I want to use it from within mail. Right so far?

2 - Here's the trick, it's obvious to me how you would go about making a group list in the address book provided each individual student already had an address book entry, but I don't have the slightest inclination to add all 25 students to my address book. What I really want to do is to create a single entry (contact), that has 25 email addresses associated with that I type in just once. I've tried doing this -- editing a single vcard and creating multiple email addresses in the 'work email' field of that vcard, but when I go to actually mail to that vcard, Mail reports it as a series of invalid email addresses.

So here's the question -- is there an easy way within address book or mail to create a recipient with multiple email addresses, WITHOUT putting all of those individual email addresses in the address book as their own seperate vcards? I really hope there is, but for some reason, I can't find out how, within the documentation or within these forums. Right now I'm just copying and pasting from a spreadsheet the list of addresses into the bcc field of mail every time I want to write the class. Pretty clunky.

Thanks for any help or ideas you can give!

 

[dubbz]

Only thing I can think of is to put all the addresses in one, long, line seperated by ',' and saved in the Notes section of a "Student" vCard, and then copy-n-paste or drag the list of addresses into the bcc field whenever you want to send out the e-mails.

eg:

user@mail1.com,user2@mail2.com,student3@mail_IV.com

 

[pna]

Only thing I can think of is to put all the addresses in one, long, line seperated by ',' and saved in the Notes section of a "Student" vCard, and then copy-n-paste or drag the list of addresses into the bcc field whenever you want to send out the e-mails.

eg:

user@mail1.com,user2@mail2.com,student3@mail_IV.com

Hmm, that's basically what I'm doing right now with the email list in a spreadsheet. I'm really surprised mail wouldn't allow for something as simple as this.

Anyone else with other ideas?

thanks for the reply, dubbz.

 

[Grimace]

I'm still having the same issue - anyone feeling smart?

I want to create a group email list in Mail for 400 people. It seems that the only way that Mail will let you make a group is by forcing you to create separate address book entries for each person. That would be excruciatingly painful.

This seems like a basic feature that mail should have, so I'm hoping that I am missing something obvious.

 

[autrefois]

I'm still having the same issue - anyone feeling smart?

I want to create a group email list in Mail for 400 people. It seems that the only way that Mail will let you make a group is by forcing you to create separate address book entries for each person. That would be excruciatingly painful.

This seems like a basic feature that mail should have, so I'm hoping that I am missing something obvious.

I was just looking to do the same thing, looked on a bunch of sites (including this thread), and I think I finally figured it out on my own. I've wanted to do this for years, and was stubborn enough today to try different things until something worked.

This works for me if you're using Mail, it doesn't seem to work if you paste in the addresses from anywhere else that I've tried.

1) Create a new group in Address Book
2) Go to an email that has all of the addresses you want in the "To" field (or CC, BCC). It can either be an email you received, or an email you're composing. If you don't have one email that has all the addresses, you can repeat this method to add other ones later to the same group.
3) Select all the addresses you want to go in the new group by clicking and dragging to highlight them.
4) Drag the list of email addresses onto the name of the group in Address Book. It will ask you if you want to create new cards for all of the emails, which you'll confirm.

Then you can email all the recipients in the group just by typing the group's name in Mail.

If you have some of the contacts already in your Address Book, it lets you know and you can either review them, accept them, or cancel.

One thing to watch out for: I happened to have already received or sent an email to everyone on the list. It seems that Address Book only "likes" emails that Mail recognizes (which turn into the blue oval). If you haven't sent an email to a recipient yet, you may have to do this before Address Book will recognize it. You could paste your mailing list in Mail, send an initial message to everyone, and then copy the email addresses from that sent email into Address Book using the method above, for example. I don't know if there's a way around this.

 

[TryingToHelp]

Another solution

I was able to solve this problem as follows:

1. Create a new Group in Address Book and name it whatever you want your distribution list to be called.
2. With that Group still highlighted, create a new contact (using the + at the bottom of the name column).
3. For this new contact, check the "company" box so that the Company name is how the contact is listed. Make the name of the company the same (or similar - or not) name as your distribution list name.
4. Copy and paste ALL of your email addresses (all at once) into the email address field for this new "person." I use the format firstname lastname <email.address@domain.xxx> - each address separated by a comma.
5. Close Address Book

Now when I type in the group's name in Mail, everyone gets my email. It's admittedly cumbersome and not as easy to edit as one might like, but it is fast and functional. The other down side is that everyone on the list sees all of the other email addresses. Hope this helps.

 

[JPUIG]

How to create a mailing group

1. Create a Group in your address book. Say, "Work" for all your co-workers.

2. In MAIL, click on the icon to open Address Book (if you don't see the icon, customize your toolbar)

3. Double click on the group "Work".

Mail opens a new message with all the recipients in "Work"

You can use the BCC field if you do not wish all the recipients to see each others' addresses.

 

[Grimace]

1. Create a Group in your address book. Say, "Work" for all your co-workers.

2. In MAIL, click on the icon to open Address Book (if you don't see the icon, customize your toolbar)

3. Double click on the group "Work".

Mail opens a new message with all the recipients in "Work"

You can use the BCC field if you do not wish all the recipients to see each others' addresses.

I think you missed the point. We are trying to create a mailing list for people NOT in address book. More specifically, we don't want to have to create a new vcard for each person/entry. There currently isn't a group email setting in address book.

 

[bettertimes]

Create a group in Address Book 3.1.2

Mac OS 10.4.11
Mail 2.1.3

Want to create a new group in Address Book.
Clicked on GROUP Then on + ...nothing happens.
Any ideas?