I’m using MS Outlook 2003 at work. I have about 2,000 names in my contacts section and have them very well organized with categories. The problem is, while I can right-click on one item and select “New Message to Contact…” (which creates a new mail message with that email address in the “To:” field), when I select multiple contacts (with shift or control) the “New Message to Contact…” option disappears.

I’ve also tried dragging the contact cards into the “To:” field of a blank message, but that doesn’t work either.

I’m sure there’s a way to do this without using distribution groups (I like the flexibility of using categories as keywords so that my lists can be created on the fly instead of in groups). Advice from an Outlook Guru would be appreciated!

Thank you.
If you add contacts via the “To:” button in a blank message, is there any way to filter by categories? When I do that, I just get a list of all 2000 of my names.