A client has just asked if she could apply an Outlook Category to multiple Contacts she is importing, without having to physically categorise each contact separately. The answer is ‘Yes’ and here’s how:

First off – a couple of practical tips. 1) I suggest the ‘Phone List’ view when working with Contacts because you can manipulate the data far more easily than you can in the default ‘Address Card’ view.  2) When importing I usually import into a newly created separate sub-folder of my Contacts folder so I can run my initial management of them there before I incorporate them into my main folder.

Now for the mass categorisation: Simple really….

  1. Use your Ctrl or Shift key to highlight the contacts you want to categorise
  2. On the top toolbar click ‘Edit’ and select ‘Categories’
  3. Click on – or create – appropriate Categories (you can apply more than one category to an Outlook item)
  4. Click OK to finish and then get to work on those Contacts!

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