If you are using Gmail to regularly send emails to multiple people, you should create a common group for all of them. Indeed, groups are useful to segregate friends, family, casual acquaintances and professional contacts.
Whether you use Google’s webmail, phone app or a desktop email client, creating a group email in Gmail is really easy. Follow the below instructions to start using Gmail groups right now.
Creating Gmail Groups in Webmail
To create a Gmail group in your webmail, login to your Gmail account. Go to the app drawer on your top-right and click “Contacts.”
Here you will find all your visible contacts. There is an option for Gmail labels. It is now the new default setting in Gmail to add contacts to an email group. Click “Create label” to create a new email group.
Give your new label a name such as “Group-2” and save it.
When you click on a saved label, it will prompt you to add new contacts. To import contacts into this new label, simply select a contact and click its three-dot icon. You can easily transfer it to one of the saved labels as shown here.
Gmail also allows you to select multiple contacts and add all of them to a saved label.
Subsequently, if you click on any of the labels, you will be able to see all the contacts that are saved under it.
To remove a contact from a label, simply select its three-dot icon and click “remove from label.” Your groups are scalable, and there is no upper limit on how many contacts you can add to each label.
From now on, when you compose an email in your Gmail account, you will be able to select one or more groups and all of its constituent members.
You can always click on the group to see the expanded list of all members.
You can also share Google Drive documents with one or more group contacts.
Adding Gmail Groups in Thunderbird
If you’re using Gmail with Thunderbird, the email addresses can be easily added to a group “Address Book” on your top window. Click “New list” to start adding email addresses to your group.
As soon as the email addresses have been added, you can send group emails using your Thunderbird Gmail account.
Adding Gmail Groups in Outlook
If you’re using Gmail with the Outlook desktop app, go to your Outlook homescreen and click “Contacts.” Next, click “new contact group.”
Here you can add each member to the group one by one. Alternatively, you may import them from your Outlook contacts or other address groups.
Once the group has been saved, you can easily retrieve them next time you compose an email in Outlook.
Adding Gmail Groups on Phone Apps
To add Gmail groups on Android, you only have to download and install the Contacts app. The app will back up and sync your contacts from the desktop. The procedure to create and edit groups using “labels” remains the same as discussed earlier. The Contacts app is only supported on Android Marshmallow and above.
If you use Gmail with iPhone, the above app is not supported. You can use an alternative called “Contacts sync for Google Gmail.” It makes your iPhone and Gmail contacts match each other and supports their respective groups.
Conclusion
We previously saw how emails can be multi-forwarded in Gmail. For sending emails regularly to multiple people, the Groups feature of Gmail makes your life easier.
What improvements do you think should be made to Gmail’s group email facility? For me, it would be the ability to add sub-groups, a feature which is currently missing. Do let us know your views on this in the comments.