Exporting group members from Outlook address group

[pfluch22]

My Outlook 2010 address book contains a large number of groups, each with many members. Some of these groups contain a number of members whose entries are out of date. Rather than scrolling through the member lists I would like to export the members of the group along with their contact/location information to excel, to facilitate going through these lists. Excel is not necessarily a requirement, just need a reasonable way to even print out a list of the members.

Exporting the group to .txt just gives me the group name information, not the member info.

Ctl-A, Ctl-V does not work in this context.

My instinct says that there must be a way to do this.

Any help appreciated greatly!

E. Pfluch

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Open each group, press Forward, in internet format and open the resulting text attachment to get the names. Repeat. tutorial: forward a DL

If you have a large number, there might be some vba floating around the internet that will automate it, but the forward trick might be just as fast.

I've never tried selecting all DLs and using File, Save, as text... ooohhh... that worked in a quickie test with 2 DLs. Use Instant Search to show only DLs - the query will be messageclass:ipm:distlist - then select all, file, save...

 

[pfluch22]

Thank you for your reply. When I do anything, all I get is the name of the group in a list.

I don't think this is a distribution list per se (I am new to Outlook) but looks like some kind of a subgroup, on which no actions that I can find are allowed. (See two screenshots below, if they are clear enough).

View attachment 353View attachment 354

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Ah, that is the address book & the GAL, not Contacts. I'll see what I can figure out with it.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Forgot I had an article on this - See How to print an Exchange DL. This only gets you halfway there - a list of names in the DL. (If you add all the DLs to a new message, expand all then paste into a new group, each name will be listed only once - helpful if many people are in multiple groups.)

I don't know what method would be easier/better for getting the contacts into excel, especially if they are in the GAL instead of in Contacts. I'll have to think on it.

If you have an idea who needs updated by looking at the list of names and email addresses, you could just stay in outlook...

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I know... bad form to talk to myself... but if that contact card annoys you, the legacygal key at Outlook Contact Cards might make this job easier. it's the section/key right before the video.

 

[pfluch22]

Diane,

I very much appreciate your thinking out loud. I found a piece of VB code for Excel in my searches, it works, but it only returns the alias. I am trying to get First name, last name, title, department and office. (Apologies, as this is my first coding experience in 20 or so years (!) and I am trying to get back up to speed).

E. Pfluch

Function GetGroupUsers(ByVal strGroupName As String) As String

Dim objGroup, objDomain, objMember

Dim strMemberlist As String, strDomain As String

On Error Resume Next

Set objDomain = GetObject("ldap://rootDse")

strDomain = objDomain.Get("dnsHostName")

Set objGroup = GetObject("WinNT://" & strDomain & "/" & strGroupName & ",group")

For Each objMember In objGroup.Members

strMemberlist = strMemberlist & "," & objMember.Name

Next objMember

' strip off the leading comma

GetGroupUsers = Mid$(strMemberlist, 2)

End Function

 

[Diane Poremsky]

The problem is that DL's don't contain all that extra info - that's why I said that if you have an idea who needs updated, that looking over list in outlook is an option. Once you get the group members, you need to go through the list and get details. There should be code samples for that available online.

In addition, these groups are in the GAL, not in Outlook, so unless you are the admin, its going to be more difficult to update them. If you are comparing them to addresses in your contacts, I'd add them all to contacts - outlook should detect duplicates and you can compare the changes.

 

[pfluch22]

Is this a reasonable thought for me to pursue:

If I REALLY REALLY want to get this as an Excel output AND

if I can use the above function to get the aliases for the members in each group

Can I then go back with those aliases and search the GAL for those aliases and extract the rest of the data that way (automatically, not manually)

I don't care if I get the entire entry, as long as I can tell who is who, whereas aliases are too alias-y.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Yes, to the best of my knowledge, if you have the aliases, you can push them through a different function and get full contact data. I don't have any code samples though.

What version of Exchange?

 

[pfluch22]

Exchange 2010

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Ah heck, I should have asked earlier. You can use cmdlets. Not sure exactly which one you need - but they are all linked from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998258.aspx You do need to be the admin, or the admin needs to do it for you.