how to email contact list members

Question

SP2010 In a contact list, you can select several people, but there is no option to email those selected.

Is this an option that can be turned on in administration or would it require a third party web part or just plain custom coding?

This option is apparently available in SharePoint Online (Office 365) installations, but I'm dealing with SharePoint on Intranet.

Answer 1

OOTB, you can export the list to Excel and select the users you need and put them in your email. You can also connect the list to Outlook and it'll import everyone into a separate Other Contacts list which you can then select from.

If those aren't viable, then you need to buy one like the one mentioned or roll your own.

Answer 2

There isn't anyway out of the box to do this. You would either need to write some custom code to do this or you could use a third-party solution.

Bamboo has a "Group Email Web Part" that might work for you: http://store.bamboosolutions.com/sharepoint-group-email-web-part.aspx

Answer 3

You can use out-of-the-box "Connect to Outlook" functionality on Contacts list. Contacts are exported to Outlook separate contact group. Then you can call Outlook Mail Merge functionality to create personalized e-mail messages using Word as editor. But you can not select recipients in SharePoint. You need to filter recipients in Outlook.

If you want to filter and select recipients in SharePoint list you need to write your own custom solution. You can write Custom Action ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms465980.aspx ) to pass list of e-mails to Outlook via a link (mailto:name1@example.com,name2@example.com).

You can also use third-party mail merge SharePoint solution like http://www.enovapoint.com/junglemail/sharepoint-group-email/ . Solution must be integrated into SharePoint to allow selection of recipients directly in SharePoint list.