A Global Address List is a valuable tool for any business, club, or community where members need to email each other on a daily basis.
In large organizations, day-to-day operations are inconceivable without such Windows tools, as the benefits are obvious.
Creating a centralized address list makes electronic communication faster and more efficient, which is essential in business. From their computer, each employee may access details of their colleagues and superiors.
Table of contents:
- What is the global Outlook address list?
- How to create a global address list?
- How to viewing the global address list?
- Adding global address list to contacts in Outlook
- Updating the global address list in Outlook
- Exporting global address list from Outlook
- How to export Outlook email addresses into distribution list
What is the global address list in Outlook?
Discover an extremely handy type of list that is managed centrally and allows you to update global address list in Outlook. With any version of Outlook (2010, 2013, 2016, 2019), a company must have its email hosted via Microsoft Exchange. The list contains contact details of each corporate email user and the related distribution groups. GAL is normally taken care of by the IT department.
How to create a global address list?
To do this in Microsoft Windows, you need to utilize Exchange Online Powershell. It enables you to adjust your settings via the command line. Each of the procedures below requires around 5 minutes.
The general sequence is:
New-GlobalAddressList -Name “<GAL Name>” [<Precanned recipient filter | Custom recipient filter>]
Thus, you may apply either a “pre-canned” recipient filter or a “custom” one. Here is the basic difference between the two.
If your organization’s name is Wink, a possible GAL name is “Wink GAL”, and the pre-canned filter selects all recipients with Wink as Company value:
New-GlobalAddressList -Name “Wink GAL” -IncludedRecipients AllRecipients -ConditionalCompany Wink
On the other hand, with a custom option, only recipients where, for instance, CustomAttribute15 property contains “AgencyB”, will be included:
New-GlobalAddressList -Name “Agency B GAL” -RecipientFilter {CustomAttribute15 -like “*AgencyB*”}
Once it is done, do not forget to check if you have succeeded. Try typing the name of your GAL instead of <GAL Name> and running this:
Get-GlobalAddressList -Identity “<GAL Name>” | Format-List Name,RecipientFilterType,RecipientFilter,IncludedRecipients,Conditional*
Overall, although the process may seem daunting, it is logical and quick. It only takes a few commands to ensure your brand new GAL is all set!
Viewing the global address list
From New, head to Address Book and then to Global Address Book.
You will see what your Global Address List contains. If you wish to export to your Personal Contacts, highlight all the data you need. For the whole Global Address List, press Ctrl-A. To highlight a certain range, click the first item in it, hold down Shift, and click the last item. Right-clicking on the range will cause the Add to Contacts button to appear.
Adding global address list to contacts in Outlook
After a user has gone through the sequence below, they see required contacts copied to their own Address Book for an efficiency boost.
- Click Address Book under the Find section (look at the top ribbon).
- Now choose Advanced Find option.
- Type in the name of the individual to find.
- Click OK.
- Find the name in the search results, and double-click on it. The opening window will contain the contact details of that person.
- In the bottom-left corner, find the Add to Contacts option and press on it.
- In the opening window, you are free to change the details if necessary.
- Finish with Save & Close.
Updating the global address list in Outlook
The procedure is simple, fast and crucial, as it will basically refresh the contact list on your PC. To make sure that all changes to the main Global Address List are shown on your device and everything is in sync:
On the tab titled Send/Receive, locate Download Address Book… in Send/Receive Groups optionslist. It is essential that the Download changes since last Send/Receive in Offline Address Book is ticked. Complete the procedure by pressing OK.
All the changes have now taken force, and you can be sure that your email assistant is fully synchronized. Remember to repeat this procedure regularly in order for your email correspondence to run smoothly.
Exporting global address list from Outlook
If you need to export, it is a bit more complicated than a few clicks. You have to first add all GAL contacts to your personal contact list (see above). To prevent mixing with your other contacts, you may temporarily move the latter to some other folder. For this, you could filter by the date of creation or modification.
After that, there are two paths to consider. First, the contacts may be exported to a CSV- or XLS-file. Alternatively, they may be used directly from Contacts for a Mail Merge. Installation of Access simplifies the procedure, as you may either import the details to your Access database directly or export it from there as a csv or xlsx.
Exporting Outlook Email Addresses
When you need to create a distribution list from Outlook recipients and remove duplicate addresses, there is the only one solution – Data Extraction Kit for Outlook.
Here is what you have to do:
- Run Data Extracton Kit for Outlook application.
- Click Reports and choose List of recipient email addresses option.
- This will open a report settings window:
- Select *.CSV file option to export Outlook recipient addresses to Excel format
- Select appropriate source: External PST File – if you want to create distribution list from the email recipients located in the external PST file or Outlook User Profile – to create a distribution list from current Outlook emails and download address book.
- Click Run Report and specify the location and the file name to save it.
The tool will save the email recipient addresses into distribution list which you may use later. You may download address book to Excel file or make a text copy of it.
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Getting this sort of information from Microsoft isn’t always simple, which is why I come here to get the help that I need. Thank you so much for providing this information – I went into my Outlook and created then exported several distribution lists in few steps and almost immediately. Data Extraction Kit allowed me to use email addresses of my recipients to create alphabetically sorted contact lists without duplicate contacts in Excel format. Just wanted to let you know that the work that you’re doing is incredibly helpful for newbies to Outlook (like me!).