An article in the June column suggested a fast way to create an e-mail distribution list in Outlook from a column of addresses in a spreadsheet. Bryan Caston, an Exchange engineer with AT&T who reads the technology section of his CPA wife’s copy of the JofA, suggests a way to accomplish the task without transposing the Excel list or inserting semicolons between the e-mail addresses
Copy a column of e-mail addresses from your spreadsheet and paste it into Outlook’s To, Cc or Bcc. Although Outlook will automatically format the addresses after a short delay, you can speed the process by changing a default: Go to Tools, Options, Preferences, E-mail Options, Advanced E-mail Options and be sure a check is next to Allow comma as address separator and Automatic name checking (see screenshot below).
You also can trigger the action immediately by pressing Ctrl+K, or, in some copies of Outlook before 2007, there is a Check Names function under the Tools menu (see screenshot at left).
And in Vista you can find a Check Names icon in the Message ribbon. 