Board index » Outlook » how do i export an outlook distribution list to a file?

Outlook858
I wish to access the individual email addresses that I entered in a

distribution list. Export contacts to a csv just gives a blank file.

Perhaps I should have entered them as separate contacts and constructed the

distribution list from the contacts? There was no advice describing the

difference between groups and distribution lists.



Any ideas?


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DL's have never survived an export. This is just one of many reasons that

exporting is the wrong way to transfer Outlook data.

Explain more fully what you want to do. If you want to transfer the DL's to

another installation, just copy your Contacts into a PST file, then open

that file in the other installation. If you just want to access the names

and addresses in the DL, just save it as txt file.

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Russ Valentine

[MVP-Outlook]

"TonyH" <TonyH@discussions.microsoft.com>wrote in message



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Why is this the "wrong way" to transfer Outlook data - There is nothing in

Help which states this. Why doesn't it say "DL's will not survive an export"?



I have created distribution lists to send emails to 16 groups of people. I

typed them directly into 16 DL's, and not as separate contacts. Later I

found that I needed just one of the entries in my DL. OK I cut and pasted a

single one, but it would also be useful to combine the entries of all the

DL's into one master list. I suppose it would have been better to create

separate contacts for each one and then construct my DL's from these. Too

late!



I do not want to transfer these DL's to another installation. I just wish

to manipulate the individual addresses;move them between DL's; construct

Contacts from each entry in the DL etc.



I assume that it would be best to save the DL's as text files. Once again I

could find no reference to this procedure in the Help system.



"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

You already discovered why exporting is the wrong way to transfer Outlook

data. You lose some of the data. I can't help it if the Help files don't

document all of Outlook's little shortcomings. DL's that are not based on an

underlying Contact entry seem to be especially fragile. DL's are so buggy

that most of us look for alternatives to using them.



Probably your best bet would be to save these DL's as txt files. Then open

them, remove the DL name at the top so that all you have is a nice clean

list of names and email addresses. Then you should be able to import this

list as a tab delimited file into your Contacts.

--

Russ Valentine

[MVP-Outlook]

"TonyH" <TonyH@discussions.microsoft.com>wrote in message



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