Email conundrum - Advice needed...

[AndyCalling]

Hi folks. I'll lay out what I'm trying to achieve and how WP8 seems to be forcing me to get there. What I'm after is a better solution from you guys.

I have an email group set up on my Outlook account with about 60 addresses on it. I need to send notices to this group whilst mobile, often with one or more pdf or Office docs attached, addressed from my Outlook alias. The problem is that the email client in WP8 will attach files, but can't cope when a group gets bigger than 25 people and can't send from my alias unless set to do so permanently (not acceptable). The web browser on WP8, when accessing either the mobile or desktop versions of the Outlook site, can send as an alias to the full group of over 25 people, but cannot upload attachments from WP8. It seems the way Outlook expects me to work is to draft the email on my WP8 phone and attach the files, then log in to the web based version, pick up the draft (which should now have its attachments in place), address it to the full group and then finally send it from my alias. This seems to be a rather user unfriendly way for the Outlook service to handle such a simple task.

So, can any of you experts point out how I ought to be doing this? Surely there's a better way? Or perhaps you know of a good, cheap app that can help? It really can't be as hard as I appear to be making it, so I need a bit of guidance please.

 

[Bizarro_Prime]

Could you not set up a distribution list and use that on your phone?

 

[AndyCalling]

Distribution list you say? Sounds like a good idea. How do I set that up in Outlook? How does such differ from a Group? I assume a distribution list is basically a group that works from the WP8 client without the 25 person issue? It still leaves the problem of the alias, but I expect the mail client in WP8 will be patched to address that issue at some point as it is rather glaring. Please detail this distribution list mechanism of Outlook as it sounds like it may be just the ticket. It is unfortunate that this feature is so hidden away, I really need your help to find it.

 

[theefman]

This might help in creating your list, apparently now renamed to Groups (another brilliant move from MS, rename a function but dont tell anybody). Where do I find my distribution lists in the new Outlook.com? - Microsoft Community.

 

[ttsoldier]

This might help in creating your list, apparently now renamed to Groups (another brilliant move from MS, rename a function but dont tell anybody). Where do I find my distribution lists in the new Outlook.com? - Microsoft Community.

Distribution lists and groups are the same now.

Edit. Have you tried creating the group in Windows Phone? When you go to the people hub and add group? From there you can add everyone from your contacts.

It will be tedious at first, but you will only need to do it once.

 

[AndyCalling]

The problem with groups is that WP8 states that I cannot use a group with more than 25 people in it. This is not true as it works fine from Outlook through a web browser, it's just that WP8 is too limited to cope. I can manually add over 25 addresses to an email, but I would have to do that every time. I can even do this on my single core netbook with only 512meg ram, but for some reason my more powerful WP8 phone just can't handle it. The group shows up in the people hub with all members listed, but with a message on the 'What's New' tab telling me I can't use the group until I remove most of the people from it, which kind of makes them a bit pointless. As I say, this is not a problem for the Outlook web service, just for the WP8 mail client. So, is there an app that can do this and allows sending from an alias? Or perhaps there's a way to attach pdfs and office docs on my phone or skydrive through the Outlook webmail service? I'm not looking to do anything complex here, many people must be doing such things, so all I need to do is work out how they are doing such. If only I was smarter... this phone is so hard to work out.

 

[biboyflip]

For attaching multiple PDFs or Other files even those not recognized by WP8, I suggest you use skydrive. Open your skydrive app and browse for the file, right click, share and copy the skydrive link to clipboard, then switch to your email client and paste the skydrive link. Switch back to skydrive app and get the links for other files and repeat the procedure.