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Groups in Mail.app - what am I missing

C

chatoyer

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 11, 2006
189
7
Te Wai Pounamu, New Zealand
Originally appended to a thread in another sub-forum, but repeated in this sub-forum as it's more appropriate:

I want to create a 'group' with 50 emails addresses of all my students in my class. I regularly email them collectively, hence the need for a group. Am I meant to manually enter in all of their email addresses into Address Book, and then create a group? Can I not just create a group within Address Book that holds 50 email addresses? I tried to paste in the 50 addresses in the 'email' field for the Address Book entry, with each email separated by commas (the first time), then semi-colons, but didn't work either time when actually sending an email (error came back that server didn't recognise the email address).

Anywho, am really puzzled by this. In Outlook, Entourage and, I think, Gmail, creating a group like this is dead easy. The way Mail/Address Book wants me to do it is to populate my Address Book with a huge number of email addresses which I'll rarely, if ever, use individually but much more often collectively.

Would love to hear if someone has found away around this...
 
chatoyer said:
Originally appended to a thread in another sub-forum, but repeated in this sub-forum as it's more appropriate:

I want to create a 'group' with 50 emails addresses of all my students in my class. I regularly email them collectively, hence the need for a group. Am I meant to manually enter in all of their email addresses into Address Book, and then create a group? Can I not just create a group within Address Book that holds 50 email addresses? I tried to paste in the 50 addresses in the 'email' field for the Address Book entry, with each email separated by commas (the first time), then semi-colons, but didn't work either time when actually sending an email (error came back that server didn't recognise the email address).

Anywho, am really puzzled by this. In Outlook, Entourage and, I think, Gmail, creating a group like this is dead easy. The way Mail/Address Book wants me to do it is to populate my Address Book with a huge number of email addresses which I'll rarely, if ever, use individually but much more often collectively.

Would love to hear if someone has found away around this...
Click to expand...

What if you make a vCard in for example Entourage, with the class name (or some such identifier) as the name, with multiple contacts, and import that as a single contact into Address book? If I understood the help files in Address book correctly, this ought to be possible.

It doesn't address the issue of it not being easy to do in Address book, but it might give you what you want in this case.
 
Well this is easy to do in Address Book, but not if your addresses aren't stored there.

But here's another way: If you have the list of addresses in To: or CC: line of an e-mail, selected them all and drag to the Desktop (or elsewhere). This will create a clipping file including all of the addresses. Now the clipping file can be dragged into the address line of a new e-mail.
 
Thanks for the replies. I think I've figured it out, based on the suggestion form IJ Reilly.

1. Paste the list of addresses into the TO: field of mail.

2. Highlight all and drag to the desktop to create a clipping.

3. In Address Book, start a new contact (not a group), make it a Company, and call it what you will.

4. Drag the clipping into the email section of the Company contact you just created. All email addresses should be separated by a comma

5. Click on the EDIT button for the contact you just created to 'save' it.

6. Go to Mail, start a new message, and start typing the name of the company you just created.

7. Now, this is the tricky bit. You have to click on the company name you created and say "Edit address". The reason being is that, if you scroll all the way down the list of addresses in that company, you'll see a "," or a ">" at the very end. You have to delete those because Mail will choke trying to figure out what they are for. I played around with trying to see how they can be removed when importing in Step 4 above, but for the life of me I can't figure out.

Am still absolutely dumbfounded that this is the kludge necessary to get this to work, especially when it is so terribly easy in other email programs. D-, Apple. D-.
 
Use Smart Group?

I read this and tried a test on my macbook and it worked fine.

In my Address Book I put the word "test" in the note field of two entries. I then created a Smart Group with the criteria that the note field contained the word "test". I then saved it with the name Test Group. (Original, huh?)

Test Group now shows up as a group and all I have to do is select it from the address book and it popped both names into the To: field as expected.

Just make a notation in the note field of each student's entry in the address book such as, "Student eMail" and then use this criteria in a Smart Group entry.

I'm new to the Mac and using the lasted build of Tiger so I don't know if the mail app is different in other builds of the OS.
 
Poppa Bob said:
I read this and tried a test on my macbook and it worked fine.

In my Address Book I put the word "test" in the note field of two entries. I then created a Smart Group with the criteria that the note field contained the word "test". I then saved it with the name Test Group. (Original, huh?)

Test Group now shows up as a group and all I have to do is select it from the address book and it popped both names into the To: field as expected.

Just make a notation in the note field of each student's entry in the address book such as, "Student eMail" and then use this criteria in a Smart Group entry.

I'm new to the Mac and using the lasted build of Tiger so I don't know if the mail app is different in other builds of the OS.
Click to expand...

I think the OP wants a way to do with without having to put all the students in to his Address book as separate contacts. :) His solution of making a company entry, dragging his clipped file with the addresses into it, and editing out a bit of extra code in the string, meant he didn't have to put them all in one at a time.
 
annk said:
I think the OP wants a way to do with without having to put all the students in to his Address book as separate contacts. :) His solution of making a company entry, dragging his clipped file with the addresses into it, and editing out a bit of extra code in the string, meant he didn't have to put them all in one at a time.
Click to expand...

This is exactly the reason why I need to refrain from logging on until at least my second cup of java. You are correct and I should pay more attention to what I am reading.:eek:
 
chatoyer said:
Thanks for the replies. I think I've figured it out, based on the suggestion form IJ Reilly.

1. Paste the list of addresses into the TO: field of mail.

2. Highlight all and drag to the desktop to create a clipping.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, why did you feel the need to go beyond these two steps? The clipping file can act as your address list for this purpose. It can be dragged directly into the e-mail. Address Book not required.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Out of curiosity, why did you feel the need to go beyond these two steps? The clipping file can act as your address list for this purpose. It can be dragged directly into the e-mail. Address Book not required.
Click to expand...

One disadvantage that occurs to me is that you can't then use the "group" if you want to mail the group from a mobile device (one that's synchronised with Address book, that is).
 
annk said:
One disadvantage that occurs to me is that you can't then use the "group" if you want to mail the group from a mobile device (one that's synchronised with Address book, that is).
Click to expand...

I didn't get the impression that this anything the OP wanted to do. FWIW, the clipping file is portable.

I was just wondering why he went through all of those steps to create an Address Book entry when the first two would have (apparently) sufficed.
 
IJ Reilly said:
I didn't get the impression that this anything the OP wanted to do. FWIW, the clipping file is portable.

I was just wondering why he went through all of those steps to create an Address Book entry when the first two would have (apparently) sufficed.
Click to expand...

I didn't get that idea either, necessarily, but your question got me thinking. Another disadvantage, although small, is that you'd have to keep that clipping file somewhere.

It didn't occur to me that the file is portable, but I don't think that the portable device I use to mail on the go (a Nokia phone) would let me import it into the mail (though I maybe could import it as a contact to my phone, hmmm...).

I agree with the OP, that it's too bad you have to have all the names in Address book before you can make a group, especially if you don't have any other need for the addresses except the group. But I think he (with your help) found an admirable work around.
 
IJ Reilly asks a good question. The first two steps would have indeed been sufficient, but as annk points out I didn't necessarily want to have a clipping on my desktop (or elsewhere). Another problem: I teach multiple classes, so multiple groups. If there are two or three clippings on the desktop, I cannot easily tell which one is for which class as I don't think they can be renamed (can they?).

Oh well, thanks everyone. Here's hoping they fix it in October (?) with 10.5.
 
Clipping files can be renamed the same way as any other file, and they can be stored anywhere you like. I'm not sure I understand your objection to having them around. Clippings are very useful critters, one of the nice things OSX does so easily that Windows can't do at all.
 
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