Microsoft Office 365 Contact Lists and Groups Tidbit!

Hello there!

This time round for tidbits, we will be teaching you how you can create Contact List and Contact Groups on our Microsoft Office 365! 

We understand how convenient it would be for teachers to use Contact list for sending emails to groups of teachers and/or students! Hence, we thought we would create an article for you to refer to, whenever you need to. Also, we would be covering in summary the differences between a Contact List and a Contact Group.

1. To create a Contact List:

Log into your Microsoft Office 365 account

Click on the icon on the top left hand corner to drop the menu down

After which, click on the "People" icon

Select "New" and "Contact list"

Now you can proceed to title your list as well as adding people too

Once your relevant members of the list has been added, you can click "save" and your list will be successfully created!

To delete an older Contact List that is not in use, simply select the list and then click "delete"

And you are done!

2. To create a Contact Group:

Repeating the first two steps, you will want to log into your Microsoft Office 365 account

Click on the icon on the top left hand corner to drop the menu down

After which, click on the "People" icon

Click on the "New" under "Groups" on the left toolbar

There will be a window, which appears on the right side where you can edit the relevant information such as Group name, addition of members, privacy, language and subscription to news and updates

If you wish to leave a group, simply click on the group you are in

On the right side, you will be able to find a button that has the function of "Leave group"

And you are done!

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So then, in summary, what is the difference between Groups and Lists? 

I mean, they sure seem to have the same function at a glance, but if you were to take a closer look and explore deeper, you might realize that while both Groups and Lists reach out to specific number of people, Contact Lists functions primarily as a list of email addressees. Meaning, Contact Lists are created just for the convenience of emailing particular groups of people.

While having a Contact Group creates the platform needed to reach out to specific people; you can post conversations, create notes, upload files, etc in this specific Contact Group created.

Should you then be creating Groups or Lists?

Well, it depends on what you need and are looking for. If you are looking for an interactive platform where specific groups of teacher(s) and/or students can exchange information and materials, then using a Contact Group would be useful. But if you are looking to simply ease the process of emailing multiple individual addressees, you should consider creating a Contact List instead.

We hope this article was useful in providing instructions and steps to creating both Contact Lists and Contact Groups in Microsoft Office 365! We also hope our short summary gave you a better understanding towards the use for each feature!