Sending Email to Groups & Distribution Lists
- Use a Group or Distribution List to send internal communication to multiple people at once without typing in each name.
- Groups and Distribution Lists are more suited for internal communication and usually do not accept email from external senders unless explicitly setup to do so.
- Distribution Lists are managed by the IT department.
- Groups are managed by the Group owner(s) and/or the IT department.
- To help differentiate Distribution Lists from Groups, “Email Distribution List” is appended to the name. For example: Department Heads Email Distribution List
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Note - A number of Distribution Lists may be retired in the near future and replaced by their equivalent Group counterpart.
In this article
Send Email to a Group or Distribution List
- Start a new email and in the To field begin typing the name of the group, list or department that you want to send to.
- To bring up only Distribution Lists, use the term distribution in the text field and the results will appear automatically. To view more of them, click on Search Directory.
Optional - Expand to view the members of the group or list by clicking on the plus sign next to the name.
Consider using the Bcc (Blind carbon copy) field
When sending to a large number of email addresses it's best practice to use the Bcc field. This will hide the email addresses from the recipient preventing Reply All “email storms”.
- Start a new email and in the To field use your own name.
- Click the Bcc button towards the right of the To field. The Bcc field will show.
- Begin typing the name of the group, list or department that you want to send to.
Distribution List vs Group
Both a Distribution List and a Group work the same when it comes to emailing multiple people at once. However, a Group provides many more features. Here are some of the differences:
Distribution List
Microsoft 365 Group
Send emails to all members of a list
Yes, both for internal and external senders.
Yes, both for internal and external senders.
Shared Mailbox
No.
A copy of the email can go to the shared inbox for archival and easy onboarding of new members.
Shared Calendar
No.
Yes, automatically included.
Document Library
No.
Yes, automatically included as a SharePoint site.
Team
No.
Yes, optional.
Management of Groups & Lists
The IT department allows anyone to create a new group. This improves user adoption of Groups and Teams as well as facilitate better collaboration with internal users and optionally external guests. Distribution Lists can only be created by the IT department, but it is possible for users to be setup to manage them.
Created by Admin
Created by User
Group/Team
team-name@plainville.ma.us
mygroup-name@plainville.ma.us
Email Distribution List
plv-name@plainville.ma.us
n/a
View the Entire Directory
You can view room resources, groups and distribution lists that exist in the Town's environment by using the People menu. This menu is where you add personal contacts, create contact lists and view directory information.