vB Easy Archive - Contact "Groups" or Distribution Lists

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Contact "Groups" or Distribution Lists
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Posted by: nyvram

I apologize in advance if this is covered already...I tried to search & search but I couldn't seem to find the right keywords to ask my question:

Coming from a Nokia 3650 which supported groups that I created in Outlook..I am sorely disappointed the same functionality doesn't exist for the SDA or MDA. Why in the world do distribution lists not sync w/ the mobile device?

FYI..for years I have had a 'family' group in my contacts and anytime I take a picture, its about 3 clicks away for me to email it to 5 people in my family (including myself) by simply selecting 'send...'group family'...done'.

I can't even seem to find a way to create contact groups on the phone itself..much less sync from Outlook.

Is there something terribly obvious that I'm missing or does anyone know of a 3rd party tool that adds email groups to the contacts?

TIA and I apologize again if this is already covered; my search skills must be really feeble because I couldn't find squat.

Posted by: conan_troutman

I am un familiar with the phones you have but on my MPx220 I have the choice of three on my phone MISC PERSONAL and BUSSINESS,

these are found under the heading category when creating/editing a contact but if you make another category via outlook contacts on your PC they become available on the phone too so my advice is to give them categories via outlook then synch them also make sure you add the category to the master list to ensure it is always available from the drop down bar.

hope this helps.

Rik

Posted by: nyvram

Thanks Rik.

No, that's not exactly it. That will help, but on my Nokia the contacts & 'groups' are on 2 'tabs'.

When you go to send an MMS for instance, you can individually 'check' each contact you want in the 'to' field without having to go back & forth to add additional names. Second, if you have a group defined in outlook, you can simply push the righthand side of the joystick on the phone to move to the 'groups' tab & select the group..thereby placing all 10 emails instantly in your 'to' field of your MMS easy as pie.

With the smartphone os, its an extremely laborous process to add contacts one at a time. Seems ridiculous to me that MSFT didn't add the simple ability to either (a) check off multiple names in the contact lists prior to returning to editing your MMS message or (b) import contact groups to essentially do the same thing.

On the same token, I like to be able to send an email to my employees (for instnace, if i'm delayed on a flight) by simply selecting the group and entering the message once. Not hunting & pecking for each person in my group.

What a pain.

I'll keep looking around. Perhaps some 3rd party app out there fixes this HUGE feature omission (at least for me).

Posted by: conan_troutman

I think i may have seen a program that can do what your asking i understand now my old sharp had the same function it was something like send group message then picked the filter.

i will keep my eyes open for you its something I never used but can see the value in.

Posted by: nyvram

Thanks.

PS And the other thing that I miss is being able to set 'defaults' on my Nokia for all the various addresses for a contact to eliminate that step from the process. IOW:

SMS = their phone #
MMS = their email addy
speed dial = their mobile phone #
voice dial = their home phone #

etc.

This is useful to avoid having to make the same redundant selection everytime you go to contact someone. What a pain. If you don't like the default you can always choose not to set one..in which case you are prompted to choose.

I guess I don't know how to search..because I can't imagine there isn't an app out there that duplicates basic Symbian OS functionality for smartphones. It can't be that hard to build.