What Are Gmail Distribution Lists and What’s Their Purpose?
The concept of Distribution Lists comes from Microsoft Outlook, the most popular email client in the world. As the name of the feature suggests, Distribution Lists are used to distribute messages to multiple recipients without having to add each and every recipient manually.
Here are two examples of how Distribution Lists can be used to save time:
- You can send the same message to your entire family. Imagine you want to invite 30 different family members to a birthday party. Normally, you would have to enter their addresses one by one. With a Distribution List ready, you can simply enter the name of the list.
- You can share important information with your entire work team. If you have multiple colleagues with whom you share information on a regular basis, then you can save a lot of time by including them all in a Distribution List. You can even create multiple Distribution Lists for different departments.
Gmail doesn’t have a feature called a Distribution List, but it does let you create a contact group that can be used just like a Distribution List in Outlook.
Follow These Steps to Create a Distribution List in Gmail
To create a distribution list in Gmail, you need to:
- Log in to your Gmail account.
- Open the app menu and select Contacts.
- Click the Create label option.
- Name the new label.
- Go to Contacts.
- Select the contacts you want to add.
- Click Manage labels.
- Select the newly created label.
- Click Apply.
If you have many contacts, then you can narrow them down using the search bar at the top of the Contacts page. For example, if all your work colleagues use email addresses with the company domain name in them, then you can use it to filter them out in no time.
Using Distribution Lists in Gmail
Once you have created a Distribution List in Gmail, you’re just a step away from putting it to good use. This is what you need to do:
- Log in to your Gmail account.
- Click Compose to create a new message.
- Enter the name of the contact group you want to send the message to in the To field.
- Compose the message as you would normally.
- Click Send.
The message will be sent to all people included in the contact group, and they won’t see who else has received it.
Editing Distribution Lists in Gmail
Now that you know how to create your first Gmail contact group and using it to send the same message to multiple recipients, you should also learn how to edit it so that you can remove or add recipients as needed.
To remove a contact:
- Log in to your account.
- Open the Gmail menu and select Contacts.
- Select the label you want to edit.
- Select the contact you want to remove.
- Click Manage labels.
- Remove the contact from the label assigned to it.
- Click Apply.
To add a contact to an existing label:
- Go to your Gmail account.
- Open the menu and select Contacts.
- Go to Contacts.
- Select the contacts you want to add.
- Click Manage labels.
- Select the desired label.
- Click Apply.
We recommend you check your contact groups from time to time to see if they contain only the recipients you want them to contain otherwise you might end up sending messages to unintended recipients.
Automatically Organize Your Messages
When sending messages to multiple recipients at the same time, it doesn’t take much time at all for your inbox to fill up with sent messages and replies. Unless you organize it properly, you might miss an important message or accidentally click on a phishing email.
Fortunately, there are easy-to-use tools that can help you keep your inbox clean, and Clean Email is a great choice for all users of Google’s email service because it fully respects and supports its strict privacy and security requirements.
Once you connect Clean Email with your inbox, it will automatically group your messages into convenient bundles (called Smart Folders) that are similar to contact groups and Distribution Lists because they let you do something that would take many steps in one go.
Here’s how it works:
- You select a Smart Folders to see all emails that have something in common. For example, Clean Email creates Smart Folders for notifications, emails that are larger than 10 MB, unlabeled emails, and so on.
- You decide what you want to do with the messages belonging to the Smart Folder. Clean Email will then apply the same action to all selected messages.
- Optionally, you tell Clean Email to automatically do the same with all future emails that are similar to the messages in the selected Smart Folders. This way, you can automate your inbox management and save a lot of time using the Auto Clean feature.
These two features are just the tip of the iceberg that is Clean Email. The powerful inbox organizer can also be used to get rid of unwanted subscription emails thanks to its Unsubscriber feature. There’s also the Privacy Monitor feature, which you can use to check your mail address against known data breaches.
If these and other features sound attractive to you, then don’t hesitate and get started with Clean Email right now. The inbox organizer is free to try, and it works not only with Gmail but also most other email services.
FAQ
What is the difference between a Shared Mailbox and a Distribution List?
A Shared Mailbox is an inbox that can be accessed by multiple users at the same time. A Distribution List, on the other hand, is a collection of email addresses that can be used to send the same message to multiple people.
How to Add Contacts to a Group in Gmail?
To add contacts to an existing group in Gmail:
1. Go to your mail account.
2. Open the app menu and select Contacts.
3. Go to Contacts.
4. Select the contacts you want to add.
5. Click Manage labels.
6. Select the desired label.
7. Click Apply.
