Galaxy S23, import Outlook Contact Group into contacts as a group

[Brad Johnson]

I have a contact group in my work Outlook that I'd like to import into my Galaxy S23 contacts as an intact group. It's for building-wide notifications and would be handy if I could do it directly from my phone rather than logging into Outlook. I know how to generically import Contacts, but have no idea how to discretely import a Contact Group and keep it intact.

I know I can load the Outlook app and everything will sync with work. I don't want to, and that's that. I know a lot of people that use it, but I don't want yet another way for work to stick it's nose into my personal phone's business. The phone's native email is fine for everything but this one single item. If I can't find a simple way to export the group, I'll set up the email address in a Notes document on the phone so I can do a simple copy/paste. Not my first choice, but workable and I can have it ready in oh, ten minutes or so.

Brad

[K Frame]

I'm not sure that what you're wanting to do an be done without putting the Outlook app on your phone.

Essentially you're asking that a distribution list structured for a specific program to move to, and work perfectly on, your phone WITHOUT the supporting framework provided by the program's app.

Your best bet may be to export the distribution list into an Excel-type comma separated values file and use that as your copy/paste source.

[Brad Johnson]

I don't care if I lose the Outlook formatting, I only care that I end up with a group in my phone's Contact List that allows one-touch addressing for an en masse email. Was hoping there was something simple, but it if's going to take a bunch of conversion, edits, whatever, then it's a moot point.

In fact, in the few minutes since posting, I've already dumped the address list into Notepad, deleted the extraneous text, bundled everything into a nice semicolon-separated block, copied it to a Notes document on my phone, and tested the whole shebang. It's a little circuitous in application as I have to split copy/paste into the TO field into two parts, but it gets me what I need. Sending building group notifications from my phone isn't all that common, but when I need to I really need to. I was just hoping there was a simpler, more elegant way to do it.

Brad

[cordex]

The elegant way to do that is to have a distribution group created for the relevant parties.  Then you can use the email address for that distribution group (BradsBuilding101@theuniversity.edu) whenever you need to contact everyone on that list.  The other benefit of this is that if the distribution group is kept up to date then end users like you don't have to keep their notepad lists of email addresses updated when there are employment and role changes.

[Brad Johnson]

The elegant way to do that is to have a distribution group created for the relevant parties.

I have that. In Outlook. What I want it to port that group, or at least that list of email address, directly and as an intact group, to the native email client on my phone.

Brad

[K Frame]

What is the native e-mail client on your phone?

Maybe google search the documentation that.

[cordex]

I have that. In Outlook. What I want it to port that group, or at least that list of email address, directly and as an intact group, to the native email client on my phone.

No sir, I don't think you do.  An Outlook contact group is local to your instance of Outlook, which is what I took you to be asking about. 

A distribution group is created by your IT team (though management can be delegated to a user) and has its own email address.  Emails to that email address are then sent to each member of the group.

[Brad Johnson]

No sir, I don't think you do.  An Outlook contact group is local to your instance of Outlook, which is what I took you to be asking about. 

A distribution group is created by your IT team (though management can be delegated to a user) and has its own email address.  Emails to that email address are then sent to each member of the group.

Ah, okay, I didn't pay close enough attention.

A local list is much easier to manage and, since IT isn't involved, I can do it on the fly at a moment's notice. I though about a distribution group but decided against it, mostly because of the "Created By Your IT Team" aspect. Anything controlled at the IT level is subject to their twisted view of usability and utter lack of concern when there's a problem. They have no concept of "a simple solution". For example, we asked for network drops to add -80 freezer monitoring dataloggers. 30 or so drops, wall mount, ports set for DCHP Reserved. Total time should have been no more than a month, most of that waiting on a PO and the cabling contractor's scheduling service. Maybe $10k all in. Their solution was to incept a project which took two years and an ungodly number of meetings, grew from simple discrete drops to a server-based system, and ended up costing just north of $150K. No, I don't want them involved unless I absolutely have to.

I've actually spent more time on this thread than I did coming up with a viable workaround. It isn't as elegantly simple as a one-touch solution, but it works well enough for the couple of times a month I need it.

Brad