Recently I was asked by my boss to import a list of email addresses into Exchange 5.5 so that he could send out an email to multiple recipients. He didn't want to send it to each person individually, but he also didn't want anyone on the list seeing the email addresses of the other recipients.

Sounded pretty easy to me, I could just make a distribution list and have him send it out that way. But getting the names into the distribution list....THAT proved to be the tricky point.

I found a lot of information on the web but most of it was fairly confusing to me. I consider myself a pretty bright guy and I catch on to things rather quickly, but everything that I found was written for someone who had done it before. Almost like a refresher course.

For those of you that haven't figured it out yet I use this web site to store information that is important to me; if it benefits you as well then that's a bonus.

So here's a step by step guide on how to take a list of email addresses and import them into Exchange so that you can send out an email blast.

Step one: You have to realize you can't make a distribution list, add external names and move on. It doesn't work that way (or if it does I don't know how to do it, and would LOVE someone to let me know how!) It is a two part process: First, you create all the individual users, then you put those users into a distribution list. Since these users are external to your system they have to be a Custom Recipient.

This is where you scratch your head and say, "But if I'm going to make the individual users anyway, what's the use?" And the answer is: We're going to set up an import file so that you import all these users, instead of writing it yourself. This is the part on which I had the most difficulty finding information; nothing folks said made sense to me.

Step Two: Idiots guide to Creating the Import File

One HUGE caveat: There are better ways to do this. I know enough about Excel to open it and cut & paste; if you know how to increment columns (i.e., the value in column C3 would be U1, in column C4 it would be U2, in column C5 it would be U3, etc.) then you will get through this much faster than I did.

To create the import file open an Excel spreadsheet. In A1 (that's Column A, row 1; Columns are labeled at the top, rows on the left) typew iin the word "Obj-Class" (without the quotes; in fact, all of these values will not have quotes when you add them to the cell in Excel).

In B1 type "First Name"', C1 "Last Name", D1 "Display Name", E1 "Alias", F1 "Directory Name" and G1 should be "E-Mail address". When you're done you should have something that looks like this:

Next we populate the columns. Remember when I said if you're familiar with Excel this will go considerably faster? This is where your mad skills come in handy. The object class for every email address is going to be Remote; the first name will be User. Last name is going to be U1 for User 1, U2 for User 2, and so on. The display name and alias name will be the same as the last name. Why? Because I know how to copy & paste in Excel and it makes it easier for me. It's the email addresses we're concerned with.

 You can use anything for the first name that you like; you may even be able to play around with the file so that you can import them. This will get you the basic file and make it work; it's up to you to play with it & modify it to suit you.

Let's assume the list has 50 users; for ease of use we'll only work with the first two. The list can be any length, and there are better ways to do this....but, as I said, this should get you pointed in the right direction.

We'll work with two imaginary email addresses: recipient1@org1.com and recipient2@org2.com .

VERY IMPORTANT: All of your email address MUST have SMTP: in front of them. If you have a bunch of email address in an Excel spreadsheet then you can add this manually, or find an easy way to do it via Excel. I didn't have a lot of addresses so I added this by hand. 

Once the requisite fields are filled in you can cut & paste from your email list into G2 through GX. Your final result should look something like this (remember that you need to find some easy way to get SMTP: in front of the email address, especially if you have a huge list):

Remember, you can make this list as long as you like. When you run an import it will create custom recipients, each with a unique address. If you save the template you can always delete the email address & cut and paste new ones; if your lists change then you've already done the bulk of the work.

One you have your list ready save it as a comma delimited (.csv) file.

Step 3: Create a new Recipients Group

Not really needed but it keeps things neat. Open Microsoft Exchange Administrator and go to File->New Other->Recipients Container and create a new recipients container in your site. Switch to this container and, from Exchange Administrator, go to Tools->Directory Import. Click the Import File radio button and search for your file. Click Import and watch as it zooms along and imports everything.

If you've done everything correctly you'll have a number of users named U1 through UX, each corresponding to the email address in column G2 through GX.

Now you can make a distribution list and add these users.

Piece of cake!

Got a better way of doing it? Please let me know!

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