Tip 933: Display the Total Number of Members in a Contact Group

A user wanted to know if Outlook can display the total count of members of a Contact Group (distribution list).

Yes, this is possible. Open the Contact Group and click Forward > In Internet Format. This creates a new message with the contents of the DL in a text file.

Double click on the attachment (named "group_name.txt") to open the file then go to the View menu, Status Bar command to show the Status bar. Note: If Word Wrap is enabled on the Format menu, Status bar will be disabled. You need to go to the Format menu and turn off Word Wrap first.

Click anywhere in the last line and look for the line number in the status bar. Subtract 4 to get the total number of members.

Use VBA

If you prefer to use VBA to get the count, Outlook MVP Michael Bauer has a VBA code sample available here: Distribution List: Display the count of the member

Published November 14, 2011. Last updated on February 22, 2012.

Related posts:

When you want to remove members from a distribution group, click the Remove Members button, don't use the Delete key or buttonHow to remove Members from a Contact Group Tip 913: Count the Total Number of Messages Received Today Tip 84: Creating a Distribution List Tip 201: Add Addresses to a Distribution List