How to Export Contents of Your Microsoft Outlook Distribution List Into Microsoft Excel

To copy the email addresses from your Microsoft Outlook distribution lists and paste them into Microsoft Excel, complete the following steps:

Open Outlook and select contacts. You will need to locate your distribution list within your contacts. If you don’t see them, change you view by selecting View/Current View/Address Cards. This view allows you a good view of the card details so they are easily identifiable. Once located, open the distribution list.

Select File and then select Copy to Folder. (If you are using Outlook 2007, you will need to add this copy to folder button onto your ribbon). Once you have selected the Copy to Folder button, click on OK.

The contents of your list is now contained in an email style document. To select the names and email addresses, use your mouse and drag over the name and addresses you wish to copy.After selecting them, select Edit/Copy.

After they are copied, you can then paste the contents into Microsoft Excel by selecting Edit/Paste. You may need to clean up the format but this beats typing the entire distribution list all over again.

This article is helpful if you plan to do a mass email mailing from Microsoft Word. Saving the information from Outlook into Excel allows you have a source for the email addresses when prompted by Word. This is helpful because you can select some or all of the information from the distribution list.

You may need to use the TRIM function to cleanup the email addresses.