Typing out the same email addresses again and again wastes time and invites typing mistakes, especially for a whole team you email often. By the end of this page you will know how to save someone as a contact straight from an email, find your saved contacts in People view, and build a contact group so you can email a whole team in one go.
Once you exchange more than a few emails with someone, it is worth saving their details as a contact rather than relying on Outlook's memory of past conversations. A saved contact can hold not just an email address but a phone number, job title and notes, and it makes addressing future emails as simple as typing the first few letters of their name.
People view, reached from the icons at the bottom left of the Outlook window, is where all your saved contacts live, shown as cards or a list depending on your chosen layout. From here you can open, edit or delete any contact, and it is also where you go to build a contact group, useful for a team, a committee or a family, so that one address does the work of many.
- One saved group name
- Pick saved contacts here
Try it yourself
Open an email from someone you want to save, right-click their name in the From field, and choose Add to Outlook Contacts.
This is the quickest way to save someone, since Outlook fills in their email address for you and only asks you to add anything extra, like a phone number.
Click the People icon at the bottom left of the Outlook window to see your full contact list.
People view gathers every saved contact in one place, so you can browse, search or edit them without hunting through old emails.
In People view, click New Contact Group on the ribbon, give the group a clear name such as 'Marketing Team'.
A clear group name makes it obvious later, when you are choosing recipients for an email, exactly who will receive it.
Click Add Members, choose From Outlook Contacts, and select everyone who should belong to the group, then click OK and Save & Close.
Building the group once means that from now on, typing the group's name into the To field addresses everyone in it automatically.
Test the group by starting a new email, typing the group's name into the To box, and checking that all the expected names expand out before you send.
Checking the expanded list catches anyone missing from the group, or anyone included by mistake, before the email goes out.
Words people use
A tidy contacts list and a handful of well-maintained groups take a small amount of upkeep but save a great deal of retyping, and they make sure the right group of people is included every time, rather than relying on memory.
Check yourself
If you can say yes to each of these, you are ready for the next lesson.
- I can save someone as a contact directly from an email.
- I can find and browse my saved contacts in People view.
- I can create a contact group for a whole team.
- I know how to add or remove someone from an existing contact group.