Beyond the Basics:
Creating and Using Email Distribution Lists
for Communicating with Your District
This is a primer on how to use district email lists provided by the Secretary of the Academic Staff to send email to your district members by creating your own distribution list. Also included are a few brief pointers on protocol and propriety.
General
District email lists are now distributed monthly. These lists can be used
to copy and paste email addresses directly into the address field of an
email message. The monthly message from the Secretary of the Academic
Staff contains two lists:
The first list a listing of email addresses only.
The second list is a listing of actual names associated with their email
addresses. These can be used to send email to individual district members,
or to find a snail-mail address using the campus phone book or web address
search.
Finally, your district list may also contain a few members of your district
who have no known email. Using this you can either find an email the system
does not have, or contact these members through campus mail.
The purpose for providing you with these lists is so that you, as a district
representative, contact and keep informed as many of your district members
as you possibly can.
Some find that creating and using distribution lists is easier in the
long run than copying and pasting addresses into each message. This primer
helps show you how to create a distribution list for use with Eudora,
Outlook, Groupwise, Mozilla, Thunderbird, and Netscape. For web users
of Wiscmail, using distribution lists is much more difficult, but some
help is provided in this document.
Some Email Etiquette for Contacting your District members
When you send mass emailing, always use the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) for
recipient email addresses. Using the Blind Carbon Copy makes the emails
you send far more recipient friendly, as each recipient only sees one
email address in the TO: field (yours), and his or her email in the BCC
field. If you don't use BCC, then everyone in the district will see a
long list of addresses, thus obscuring the intended message.
Distribution-list creation
The following are step-by-step instructions for creating distribution
lists for various email programs, including browser-based email.
Eudora
" Select and copy the email list as supplied (email addresses only).
" Open your address book.
" Click the new tab, and a new pane should open. Fill in the nickname
with an appropriate title (e.g., Dist123Aug04), and then paste the list
of emails in the window under the 'This nickname will expand to the following
addresses."
" Then this distribution list is automatically saved in your address
book.
" To send a mail, compose the appropriate email with YOUR email in
the TO: field and this email distribution list in the BCC: field, so only
your email appears in the email header.
" Be sure to update the distribution list each time you receive a
new list of district addresses
Outlook
" Select and copy the email list as supplied (email addresses only).
" Open your address book.
" Choose to create a new email or distribution list, and select to
create a new distribution list. A new window will open.
" When the new distribution list box opens, choose to select members,
and a new window will open.
" Paste the copied list into the right window of the selection box
under the 'add to distribution list' heading. If you have any other email
addresses to add, append these to the bottom of this list of email addresses,
separated by a semicolon, and finally choose OK. This box now closes.
" Add an appropriate name for your new distribution list (e.g. Dist
123 August 04) and save this distribution list.
" Now sending out an email to your district is done by putting your
email in the TO: field and the district distribution list under the BCC:
field, so only your email appears in the email header.
" Be sure to update the distribution list each time you receive a
new list of district addresses
Groupwise
" Select and copy the email list as supplied (email addresses only).
" Create a new message
" Paste the email addresses into the BCC field
" Click the Address Book button on the toolbar
" Make sure you're in the address book you think you're in by checking
the Look In box. If it's not the right one, click the drop-down menu to
select the correct address book.
" Click Save Group
" Provide a one word name (e.g., Dist999) and click OK
" To use this group address (distribution list), simply type the
name of the group into the BCC field when sending messages to your district.
" Be sure to update the distribution list each time you receive a
new list of district addresses
Mozilla, Thunderbird and Netscape
" Select and copy the email list as supplied.
" Open notebook or any simple editor, and paste these addresses into
a new document. Save this in a convenient place as a .txt TEXT document,
with the name you want a new distribution list to be know as (e.g. District123-Aug04.txt).
" In Mozilla or Netscape email, under the tools menu, choose import…
A new window will open.
" Choose to import Address books, and click next. A new window will
open.
" Choose to import a Text file (LDIF, .tab, .csv, .txt), and choose
next. A new window will open asking you to navigate to the file. Choose
a file of type tab separated (.tab, .txt), and navigate to the file you
saved earlier. Choose open. A new window will open
" Here it shows the first email address, and has an option to set
this as any of a number of fields. Choose to set this as the primary email
address. And choose to move this primary email address label to the top
of the field box, so it aligns with the email address. Ensure that the
primary email address label is at the top of the list, and that the box
is selected (checked) to use the email address as this primary email address.
Now if you choose next, the second copied email should appear at the top
of the list with that primary email address option next to it and selected.
At this point you can just choose OK and all other emails will be imported
in the same way.
" You will now have a new distribution list with the name of that
original file (District123-Aug04 in this example). You can add or subtract
emails to this distribution list as you see fit.
" To email your district, compose a new email with your email in
the TO: field, and the district email distribution list in the BCC: field
" Be sure to update the distribution list each time you receive a
new list of district addresses
Wiscmail
" Wiscmail is an easy-access email client available over the web
from anywhere. But it has severe limitations on user friendliness. And
at this time, it is not possible to select multiple email addresses and
paste them into a list, or create multiple email addresses from such a
selection.
" The only way to do a mass email at present is to copy the list
of email addresses into a text editor. This must then be edited to make
ONE line of email addresses each separated by a comma from the next email.
So the pasted email list needs to have a comma added to the end of each
email address, and then all line feeds need to be removed until you end
up with one long, perhaps very long, line of emails with only a comma
separation between each address.
" Then compose an email and copy and paste this long comma separated
line of emails into the BCC: field of the addresses, adding your email
to the TO: field.
" It is suggested you also send yourself a copy of this comma-separated
email list, perhaps as a text file attachment. Then you can use this email
at a later date to enable you to copy and paste this comma-separated list
of emails for subsequent messages to your district.
" Be sure to update the distribution list each time you receive a
new list of district addresses