Groups (mailing lists) in Live Mail

Can Live Mail handle Groups (mailing lists) any better than Windows Mail can?

"Upgrading" from Windows XP Address Book (Outlook Express) to Windows Vista Mail Contacts turned out to be a DOWNGRADE. We gained the ability to add photos, but our ability to work with Groups (mailing lists) was downgraded. So, I am looking for alternatives.

I have over 20 different Groups set up. In the good old Outlook Express Address Book, I could open a Contact and in the "Other" tab. I could see a list of all the Groups that the person belongs to.

In Windows Mail Contacts. I successfully imported all my Contacts and Groups. But, is there any way to find out which Groups a person belongs to? It's too time consuming to manually search through each of my 20 groups.

The Help section claims that Windows Mail has all the features of Outlook Express. but the list of Groups a person belongs to is obviously missing. It looks like Microsoft is selling us a degraded product.

So, before I invest hours of my time in migrating to Live Mail, can anyone answer these questions?

1. Can Live Mail display which Groups a person belongs to?

2. Can Live Mail export both Contacts and Groups (preserving all the Groups that have been set up)? I would like to be able to export everything, both for backup purposes as well as to share my Contacts list with other people (on other computers).

3. Can the exported contacts from Live Mail be imported into Windows Address Book (on Windows XP computers), and preserve all the Groups?

4. Can Live Mail import Groups (as well as individual contacts) from both Windows Address Book and from Windows Mail Contacts?

If the answer to most of the above is NO, then I would like to plead with Microsoft to simply let us use Outlook Express in Windows Vista. Why did they have to mess with a good thing? Who was the idiot who decided to discard Outlook Express in favor of Windows Mail?

Groups, as in what you're describing are not supported in WLM. For that you
would need to use the full Outlook.

Colin Brown
WL MVP

"Emilio2000" <Emilio2000.36uf7z@xxxxxx-mx.forums.net> wrote in message
news:Emilio2000.36uf7z@xxxxxx-mx.forums.net...

"Emilio2000" <Emilio2000.36uf7z@xxxxxx-mx.forums.net> wrote in message
news:Emilio2000.36uf7z@xxxxxx-mx.forums.net...
I don't know. I have never used Windows Mail
and I don't need to use mailing lists.


Apparently WLMail doesn't use the WAB any more
but something called Windows Live Contacts...
In the Edit menu it provides Edit a group...

In the Help about that feature it says:

http://help.live.com/help.aspx?mkt=e...c_koob_sserdda

<quote>
You can organize the contacts in your Windows Live Mail
address book (A list of contacts, that contains the names,
addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses
of each of your contacts. If you're signed in with a Windows Live ID,
Windows Live Mail uses the contacts list associated with
your Windows Live ID.) into groups so that you can send e-mail
to everyone in a group at the same time. You can create multiple groups,
and contacts can belong to more than one group.
</quote>


What do you mean by "manually search"?
I don't have enough contacts coded to know exactly what it does
but there is a Find a group box in the Select a Group dialog.
Its tooltip says: Start typing to find contacts containing any term or number.
Instead of typing I would try copy and paste or drag and drop
but I haven't any way of testing those ideas right now.


My guess: probably, by typing (or pasting) in that Find a group dialog.


That doesn't look very likely. The help says contacts
can be exported as .vcf or .csv files.
Export was not a linked function in the help either.
I had to search to find it.

; }


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---

I agree with you completely, I also think you should be able to right click a
contact & see all the groups assoc. with them & add or delete groups right
then & there. Also a 'group' view would be nice to have also

"Emilio2000" wrote: