Understanding Outlook.com Contact Groups/Distribution Lists
A frequent misunderstood issue/question involving Outlook ‘2013 found on many forums related to Contact Groups (formerly known as Distribution Lists – DLs) goes along the lines of “Why can I no longer create Contact Groups using Outlook ‘2013?”
The issue being referred to is the greyed out which only occurs when dealing with an Outlook.com contact folder when it’s configured as an EAS mail account which is currently applicable only to Outlook ‘2013
Reality is that Outlook ‘2013 creates Contact Groups the same way as any previous version with one difference which involves Outlook.com accounts configured using the EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) protocol. This is a limitation of EAS which up until Outlook ‘2013 was used exclusively to sync with mobile devices. It’s an issue that Microsoft is well aware of and working on but it is not a trivial modification and there is no ETA for when a solution will become available at the time of this writing (Nov ‘2014).
It could be said that Microsoft certainly underestimated the usage of Outlook.com Contact Groups resulting in the impact of changing to the EAS protocol from MAPI used in the Outlook Hotmail Connector. However, the purpose of this article is to outline “what is” and not “what should have been or should be”.
The alternatives for using Contact Groups on Outlook.com are:
- Use the Outlook.com web interface to send emails involving Contact Groups
- Create a new PST file with a new contact folder and create Contact Groups in this new contact folder. Unfortunately, this means that the Contact Group(s) can only be used on the computer used to create them
- Manage Contact Groups via the Outlook.com web interface and use mail-merge in Outlook ‘2013 selecting the applicable CG category name
- If this is a critical business requirement, subscribing to a hosted Exchange email account and using it instead of the free Outlook.com email account resolves the issue
- Continue to use an earlier version of Outlook with the Outlook Hotmail Connector
How things work
Regular Contact Groups created in any version of Outlook result in a special contact item being created in the contact folder with a specific MessageClass of <IPM.Distlist>. Standard contact items have a message class of <IPM.Contact> and contacts created using a custom form have a message class of <IPM.Contact.YourFormName>.
An IPM.Distlist contact item can contain 5 types of entries
- Existing Contact Items referenced by the contact item’s EntryID
- One-off contact entries that do not exist as an item in any contact folder (referenced by its EntryID)
- GAL (Global Address List) members in an Exchange environment
- Other Contact Groups that already exist in any other contact folder
- A Global Distribution Group created in Exchange
Contact Groups created in Outlook.com accounts via the Outlook.com web browser interface is essentially the equivalent of adding a category to a contact item where the category value is the name of the Contact Group. Unlike Contact Groups created in Outlook for any email accounts other than Outlook.com, you cannot embed one Contact Group inside of another. Any new members added to an Outlook.com Contact Group via the web interface must be pre-existing contacts, one-off email addresses cannot be added.
Is EAS necessary in your particular situation?
Not everyone requires sync’ing Outlook.com data to multiple devices. If you only access the Outlook.com account from a single computer using Outlook with your Outlook.com account AND the availability of Contact Groups in Outlook is of paramound importance, then configuring the Outlook.com email account as either a POP or IMAP account may server your needs better and is something that should be considered in the interim.
Sync’ing Contact Groups using MAPI protocol
(Outlook ‘2010 and earlier via Outlook Hotmail Connector)
One of the major differences between creating Contact Groups for an Outlook.com account in Outlook via the Outlook Hotmail Connector is that a pre-existing Contact Groups cannot be embedded in another contact group creating a multi-tier group structure. When the Contact Group is sync’d with the online Outlook.com account, any one-off members are converted to contact (people) items online which in turn then get sync’d back to the Outlook desktop.
Contact Groups created online via the Outlook web interface get sync’d to the desktop creating a standard Outlook contact group item using the IPM.DistList MessageClass as noted earlier.
Sync’ing Contact Groups using EAS protocol (Outlook ‘2013)
Contact Groups cannot be created in Outlook ‘2013 in an Outlook.com contact folder when the email account is configured using the EAS protocol. The option is greyed out in the Outlook desktop client. Any Contact Groups created online get “quasi” sync’d down to the desktop by adding a category value identical to the online Contact Group name to each member of the Contact Group. However, adding/removing the same category value tofrom other contacts does not result in these contacts being added/removed to the online Contact Group.
In short, the only way to currently manage an Outlook.com Contact Group is via the online interface.
Category: Understanding Outlook
