Re: Creating a Group From a File of E-mail Addresses

From: Alan Schaevitz (spam_at_comcast.net)
Date: 08/20/04 

Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:54:33 -0700

Paul,

I should have realized a simple copy/paste approach would work to create a
new group. Now let me add a wrinkle. The Excel spread*** has two columns
for e-mail addresses (association members often have a different e-mail for
husband and wife). No problem. Just copy the second column and paste it at
the end of the group. However, often the second column entry is blank (they
only have one e-mail address). Occasionally, both entries are blank (family
doesn't have Internet).

If I were creating the group once, it would be easy to just go down the list
of entries after creating the group and deleting the blank ones. However,
the spread*** is frequently updated by our secretary (I am the webmaster
and handle group e-mails for the association) and I get a new copy of the
spread***. I don't know what has changed, so the easiest way to update
the group is to totally re-create it. Now I have to again go down and
delete all the blank entries in the group. This gets tedious if done
frequently.

So, for the challenge. Could a script be created to take care of this
tedium?

Alan

---------On 8/19/04 5:28 PM "Paul Berkowitz" wrote:

> That method forces you to make full contacts of each entry (Excel row)
> before making them into a group. This may be what you want, because you can
> get all sorts of information from the various Excel columns, not just email
> addresses, of course.
>
> Sometimes people want only the email addresses (and maybe names) as simple
> group members, not to make every entry a full contact in the Address Book.
> The way to do that is this:
>
> 1. Select and Copy the email address column in Excel.
> 2. Make a new group in Entourage. (Remove top item if any is there already
> from a selection in the Address Book..)
> 3. Paste and Save.
>
> Voilą! There's your group. If the top item was a header, remove it from the
> group.