Sue, thanks very much for your detailed steps. It has helped, and I will be
able to use your method - AFTER adding a couple of additional steps. The
reason your steps were not "obvious", was because the DL I had wanted to
copy/paste was NOT in my Contacts folder, but on a "Global Address List".

Even though I am the "owner" of the DL, MS Outlook does NOT provide any
functionality that should be "obvious" to the owner/manager/creator of such
DLs. I also confirmed with our EDS Help Desk that there is NO functionality
currently available to owners of DLs on the "Global" (internal network) side
other than Adding or Removing from the DL.

ATTENTION MICROSOFT - In the corporate and government worlds, there is
obviously a considerable number of LARGE Distribution Lists that
owners/managers would like to be able to manage more effectively. For
starters, MS should add the same functionality currently available for DLs
created in a personal Contact folder - where one can pick field names, sort
by field name, and print in a formatted state. An additional option should
be to copy/paste the info to Excel, or at least save it to a text file as Sue
Mosher explained - which is currently ONLY possible in personal Contact
folders.

For the record, I’ve tried the following… I opened my Global DL and used the
"Add to Contacts". This results in the entire list of INDIVIDUAL names from
the DL being "mixed in" with all other names in the personal Contact folder.
My next step was to “isolate” my personal contacts by placing them in a
separate DL. This of course is not preferable, because one naturally does
not want to send to everyone in the personal DL.

Now with my personal contacts isolated, I was then able to take the contact
info from my Global DL and place it into a separate new DL in my personal
Contact folder. At this point, I expected (hoped) to be able to use the same
functionality as for my personal DL – i.e. to be able to pick fields, sort,
and print a formatted list. However, this was NOT possible – because the
contact info was copied from the Global list and maintained a link to same.
This prevented access to the “sorting/printing option”. I confirmed this
limitation with our EDS Help Desk.

I trust someone from Microsoft is listening, and will confirm that this
Global limitation placed on owners/managers of DLs has been addressed and
will be fixed with the upcoming release of Outlook.

Thanks again Sue and Peter for your help.

Regards,
Dale Watson


"Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

Step-by-step:

1) Go to your Outlook Contacts folder.
2) Double-click the DL to open it.
3) Look on the File menu for the Save As command.
4) Choose .txt as the output format.
5) Select the folder to save it.
6) Click Save.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.turtleflock.com/olconfig/index.htm
and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx

"Dale Watson" wrote in message ...
Sue, thanks for your help. I would have no problem saving the DL as a "txt"
file - IF ONLY I knew how to access the DL. After searching (again), I can't
find a method of accessing the DL in a way that would enable me to save it as
a text file. I won't mind you making me "red-faced" by pointing out that
what you're suggesting "should be obvious". :-). "Many thanks" if you can
point me in the right direction with more specifics.

"Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

Just save the DL as a .txt file.

"Dale Watson" Dale wrote in message ...
I'm using Outlook 2003 SP2. I have a large Distribution List, the contents
of which I need to share within our branch.

It would make perfect sense to be able to copy/paste this information into
Excel and/or Word; however this does NOT seem possible.

Is there "any" way to transfer this information - i.e. if not through some
"hidden" method of copy/paste, then perhaps an export/import method, or
perhaps through VBA?

Many thanks for any help offered.

If a solution is offered and if this is monitored by Microsoft staff, might
I suggest that this information should be made known to current users - i.e.
more prominently.

If a solution is NOT offered, might I suggest that Microsoft staff will want
to address this for a future release.

Thanks again.

Dale Watson