Create a Contact Group from an Excel document

Owned by
Mike Grosshandler
Last updated: Nov 06, 2023 by
Tse, Victor
2 min read

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To create a Contact Group from an Excel document, you can copy and paste straight from Excel.

Instructions

You can begin with just one column in Excel with just email addresses, but having an additional column with names can make the list more useful.

  1. In Excel, select the addresses from the column containing the email addresses. Optionally, you can also select the column containing the names.
    In either case, make sure you do not select the row containing the headers.

  2. Press CTRL+C to copy the selected cells.

  3. In Outlook, create a new Contact Group or Distribution List (the name depends on your version of Outlook). The New Contact Group button is found on the left side of the ribbon under the "People" tab. The keyboard shortcut for this is: CTRL+SHIFT+L

  4. Open the Add Members dialog

    • Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013
      Click on the Add Members drop-down button and choose From Outlook Contacts.

  5. Instead of selecting your members from your list of contacts, click in the text field at the bottom of that window next to the Members –> button and press CTRL+V to paste the copied content from Excel.
    If done correctly, each address will be listed on its own line:

  6. Press OK to close the Select Members dialog and to return to your Contact Group.

  7. Provide a name for your Contact Group and save it.


    The final result is a Contact Group directly created from an Excel list.