Today, we’re going to look at some of the features of Contacts/People in Outlook.com email from the web or internet view.

If you have an Outlook.com account, you can make a group contact list from the web view. Having a group list of a small business group or family members saves a lot of time. It’s important to note that if you are a user of Microsoft Office 365 as a subscription, you will not be able to create a group from within your desktop Outlook 2013 application. It can only be created from the web interface. Many have asked, complained and wondered why this is, but no satisfactory answer has been given.

The Group Contact List feature for Outlook.com for the web is rather new and it works very simply, so let’s take a look. After logging into your account, click on the dots over on the left and then all your on-line Microsoft applications appear. Select ‘People’. (Yes, it used to be called contacts, but it’s been changed to People.)

When ‘People’ opens up, you’ll see a list of your contacts in alphabetical order going down the left side of the screen. Some contacts have photos and some don’t. The photos appear if you have connected your Outlook.com account with one or more social networks. Then the social networks will fill in the photo. Unfortunately, you can not add a photo to your contacts from the web or desktop. Photos will only appear if you connect your account to a social network and your ‘People’  have signed up for a social network.  This is another thing people complain to Microsoft about and get no satisfactory answer. We’d like to add our own photos and make our Contacts/People more personalized, but we can’t do it right now.

You can have your contacts sorted in either first name or last name order. You can find this setting at the top of your screen and over to the right – click on the little gear and you’ll see the dropdown (below).

Import Contacts

If you have a new Outlook.com account, you can import your contacts from just about anywhere. Instructions are right on the People/Contacts page. There are also instructions to import contacts from Social Networks, if you choose.

Make an Outlook.com Contact Group

From within the People view, just click the dropdown next to ‘New’ and select ‘New Group’. You’ll need to give your group a name and then you can start adding people from your list of contacts (people). Be sure everyone you want to add to the group is already in your Contacts list because you will not be able to add people by simply typing in their email address. They must already be in your Contacts. When finished adding, remember to click ‘Save’, located at the bottom of the page.

Manage Your Contact Group

Once you have your group set up, maybe you want to edit it. There are two ways to do this. The first way is to find the name of the person in your contact list you’d like to add and click the box next to the name (located on the left). Once you click the box, you’ll notice at the top a new menu item ‘Group’ show up. Click the dropdown and you’ll be shown the names of your groups and the option to start a new group. Make your choice and click save.

The other way to edit your group is to find your group name in the list of People, click it and then you can add or remove from there.

It’s great to get the ability to make groups again using Microsoft’s free mail program. I wish they would add this feature for those of us using the Office 365 Home subscription service too. I think they may be working on it.

Gmail has a group feature, but I could not find one in Yahoo Mail.  Log into your Outlook.com email from the web, take a look at this feature and try it out. If there is some tip you have to share, please leave a comment.