Mailing lists are an erstwhile tool in the electronic mail arsenal, merely their implementation in Gmail isn't immediately intuitive. Read on as nosotros show you how to email groups using your Gmail account.

Dear How-To Geek,

I'm probably going to smack myself when you show me how easy it is, but right now I'thousand at a loss: how do I prepare a simple mailing list in Gmail? What I want to practice is make a listing of people I routinely e-mail and have some sort of shortcut, list, oranything that would permit me electronic mail them all at once without having to type in all their email addresses. Even with Gmail'southward suggestion characteristic it nonetheless takes besides long and I often forget someone on the list. Surely an e-mail service every bit mod and advanced as Gmail has some way to do this? I've looked in every menu under Settings and I can't discover a thing!

Sincerely,

Mailing Listing Blues

Don't exist too hard on yourself, yous can await all the live long solar day in the Settings menu and y'all won't find anything. Gmail does in fact have a mailing list function only they certainly don't advertise it and it isn't even, for all purposes, part of the actual Gmail arrangement.

Whether or not you apply it, attached to your Gmail business relationship is a Google Contacts account. That'southward where Gmail pulls those motorcar-consummate email address suggestions from. In order to create your mailing list y'all'll demand to first visit your Google Contacts account and group together the people you wish to electronic mail.

Head over to contacts.google.com and login if y'all're not already logged into your Google account. Start the process of edifice your mailing listing by searching for one of the contacts y'all wish add to your list. Alternatively, you could click New Contact and create an entry. Whether you're using an existing entry or creating a new one, double check that there is an email associated with the contact (otherwise your email listing won't be too useful).

In the entry, look for the Groups push, which looks similar three little people amassed together:

Click on that button to driblet down your existing groups (if yous've never used this feature, the list volition be sparse and may only incorporate the default "My Contacts" entry). Select "Create New" at the lesser of the drop down menu.

Name your new group. This name volition serve as the shortcut for your electronic mail list, and then name it something that will be like shooting fish in a barrel to call back and/or easy to blazon. Upon creation the contact you lot're viewing will at present be associated with the group:

Search for the other contacts yous wish to add to your mailing listing. For each contact use the Groups drib downwardly carte du jour and, this fourth dimension, select your new grouping name instead of creating a new one, similar and so:

After you've gone through and added each of the contacts you wish to use to your new mailing list (or Grouping, as it is known within the Google arrangement), yous're ready to head dorsum to Gmail and have advantage of the shortcut associated with the group.

In your Gmail account, compose a new email. In the email'southward accost slot, begin typing the group name:

At present, ane thing you lot might notice is that we placed our Group shortcut in the BCC slot. If you're non emailing a pocket-sized group of people who are expressly working with each other and need to be able to email back to the whole grouping (or other members of the group), don't employ the TO or CC slot, utilise the BCC. The BCC is especially important if y'all're emailing a grouping of people that are, for all purposes, unrelated to each other (such as sending out an email to the parents of all the kids you tutor to remind them that you'll be abroad during Spring Break). You can read upward on the uses of CC and BCC in HTG Explains: What BCC Is and Why You're a Terrible Person If You Don't Use It Correctly (Or At All).

Now that you have a new group and a list of contacts associated with it, you're ready to go!

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