Gmail Contact Groups

October 9, 2013

Creating Contact Groups in Google Apps and Gmail

With contact groups you can easily organize your contacts, making it easier to email a specific set of people. For example, if you created a contact group called “Soccer club”, you could just send a message to that group, rather than sending out an email to 50 different people. Never leave somebody off an email again!

To create a contact group:

  1. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
  2. Select contacts that you want to add to a group, click the Groups button. , then Create new.
  3. Enter the name of the group.
  4. Click OK.

To add contacts to a contact group:

  1. Select the contacts in the Contacts list.
  2. Click the Groups button. 
  3. Select the group you’d like to add the contact to, or select Create new to create a new group.
  4. If you have multiple addresses saved for a contact, you can choose which address should belong to the contact group by opening the contact and clicking the small arrow next to the group you’d like to modify.

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Send to a contact group

To send messages to contact groups, you first need to create a contact group. Once you’re set up, there are two ways to address a message to your contact group:

From the Compose window

  1. Open Gmail.
  2. Click Compose.
  3. In the To: field, enter the first few letters of the name of the contact group to which you’d like to send the message.
  4. Select your contact group from the list of addresses the auto-complete feature suggests.
  5. Compose your message.

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From the Contact Manager

  1. Open Gmail.
  2. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
    Gmail drop-down
  3. Select the group on the left side of the page.
  4. Click the checkbox above the contact list or select the individuals you’d like to send to.
    Checkbox button
  5. Click the Email button above the contacts list.
    Email button

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Managing contact groups

To edit the contact group name:

  1. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
  2. Select the group you’d like to edit along the left side of the page.
  3. Click More and select Rename group.
  4. Enter the new name and click OK.

To add contacts to a contact group:

  1. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
  2. Select the contacts in the Contacts list.
  3. Click the Groups button .
  4. Select the name of the groups you’d like to add these contacts to, or select Create new to create a new group.

To remove contacts from a contact group:

  1. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
  2. Select the contact in the Contacts list.
  3. Click the Groups button .
  4. Deselect the checkbox of any groups you’d like to remove these contacts from.

To delete a contact group:

  1. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
  2. Select the contact group from the groups list.
  3. Select Delete group from the More drop-down menu at the top of the page.
  4. Click OK.

This will delete the group but not the actual contacts themselves. Those will remain in your Contacts list.

Note: These instructions work only with the newer version of Gmail. If they don’t match what you see in your Contact Manager, we suggest that you upgrade to a fully supported browser or click Newer version in your account.

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