Manage Contacts and Groups
This domain tests the People area: creating and editing contacts, building contact groups, resolving names through address books, and sharing or importing contact data. Expect questions that separate personal contacts from organization-wide directories.
Contacts
Create a contact in People with New Contact. Key fields include Full Name, File As (controls sorting), email addresses, phone numbers, and Notes. Categories and Private settings work as they do in mail. Contact cards appear when you hover over a name; they show availability and organization details.
Contact groups
A contact group is a personal distribution list stored in your Contacts folder. Create it with New Contact Group, then Add Members from Address Book or from Contacts. It can be used in To, Cc, or Bcc and can be forwarded as an Outlook item. Exchange distribution groups and Microsoft 365 groups are created by administrators or in the group's own interface; they are not the same as personal contact groups.
Address books and resolution
The Address Book (Ctrl+Shift+B) lists the Global Address List (GAL), the Offline Global Address List, Contacts, and Suggested Contacts. Check Names resolves ambiguous entries. The Auto-Complete list stores previously used addresses; remove individual entries with the X or clear the list from Options > Mail.
Sharing and importing
Share a Contacts folder with permission levels similar to calendar sharing. Import and export from File > Open & Export; CSV files require field mapping, and vCard (.vcf) files hold one contact each. Mail merge in Word can use an Outlook Contacts folder as its data source.
Worked example
A user needs a group containing 12 project members and wants a coworker to use the same list. Reasoning: create the contact group in Contacts, add members from the GAL and Contacts, then send mail to the group. To share, forward the contact group as an Outlook item or share the Contacts folder; the coworker then has a copy or shared view.
Traps
GAL entries are read-only; edit them through the admin, not Outlook. Contact group members from the GAL are references, so a departed employee leaves a stale entry. A contact group is not a Microsoft 365 group and has no shared mailbox or calendar. File As controls sorting, not the email address.