Vista - Organizing Windows Contacts

I have a number of contacts for which I only have a name and a phone number.
I use these for my cellphone normally, but they are included in my Windows
contacts folder. I wanted to organize my contacts so that only people that I
have an email address for, and that I normally correspond with, would show up
when I used Windows Mail to send an email. In other words, when I click the
"to" button on a new email.

I tried creating a group, but then I'm stuck sending email to everyone in
the group. I tried copying the names with email addresses that I normally
correspond with to a subfolder within Contacts, but Windows Mail insists on
just merging the contents of the subfolder with the main contacts folder when
I click the "To" button. Now I get TWO copies of the email list interspersed
with the non-email contacts.

How can I get Windows Mail to let me see and open the subfolder I created
that has only the addresses I want to use?

Hello SHSLP,

Steps 9 and 10 in Section Two of this tutorial will show you how you send a email to a individual contact from a Contact Group. This way you can have them organized in groups and do not have to send to the whole group if you do not want to.

Contact Groups in Windows Mail

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks Brink,

#10 seems workable, but it would be much better if Windows Mail would just
recognize a subfolder and not merge it with the main contacts folder. Both 9
and 10 seem like crude workarounds for a problem that should not exist in the
first place.

Still, any solution to the problem is better than none. Thanks again

SHSLP

"Brink" wrote:

Your welcome SHSLP,

I agree, it would be nice to be able to just simply use folders and subfolders instead.

Shawn

I just created a group, but when I tried opening contacts and the group to
select recipients for an email, the 'send email' choice was greyed out.
Apparently, this only works with a single addressee. This is just as bad as
having to send to everyone in the group, only harder.

The other option is just silly. I might as well just scroll through my
whole contacts folder and choose from that. It would be much simpler than
saving, opening from drafts, and deleting the ones I DON'T want to send to!
Is there any chance this will be fixed any time soon? I can't believe
Microsoft would deliberatly design something this screwed up.



"Brink" wrote:

SHSLP,

You might consider giving the free Windows Live Mail (WLM) a try instead. It's method of sorting contacts and contact groups are a lot easier to work with. You can use both WLM and Windows Mail, or just the one you decide to be your default email program.

Windows Live Suite Downloads

Hope this helps,
Shawn