Fixing the default behavior on addressing multiple e-mail recipients in Outlook 2010
In every e-mail program or web service I’ve ever used, if I was addressing an e-mail to multiple recipients, I separated their addresses by a comma and a space. This behavior was universally accepted by all of the systems I used to send e-mail. Then, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 decided to make a change. Instead of a comma and a space, they wanted semi-colons. It took me a while to figure this out, and I can only imagine how much time it took other, less experienced computer users to figure out the same thing. I know I have had to address multiple service calls from my clients regarding this. Because I just re-installed Outlook 2010 on my primary work desktop, and ran into this same problem (it is resolved by changing a setting that is further buried the newer the version of Outlook), I decided that I should write a blog post on how to change the setting so that a comma is acceptable to separate multiple e-mail addresses.
This is the first tutorial I’ve written in a while, so it might be a bit hard to understand, as I may have left out some steps I assumed were common sense. I will say that the version of Microsoft Paint that comes with Windows 7 is phenomenal and is what I used to edit the images, including cropping, screen capture (using the Print Screen key on my keyboard), drawing, and saving (Paint defaults to PNG format now…. finally…. because PNG is the shit)
As you can see, with a default install of Office 2010, the comma character is not configured to indicate a separate e-mail address.
When you use a comma to separate addresses, upon sending the message, Outlook will throw an error letting you know that it doesn’t understand what kind of address you typed.
In order to correct this, you need to enable the option in Outlook 2010 that allows commas to be used to separate multiple e-mail addresses.
The first step to do this is to click on the File menu, and choose Options
(You might notice that Outlook 2010′s interface is completely whacked and unlike any of the other Office 2010 apps when it comes to changing settings, the File menu, etc. This is because Microsoft is the stupidest company in the world, and their enterprise e-mail clients like Entourage and Outlook live in a world of their own where there are no user interface rules, or common sense decisions like DO NOT STORE EVERY PIECE OF DATA IN ONE FLAT FILE THAT HAS BEEN KNOWN TO CORRUPT EASILY SINCE FUCKING 1996!!!!!). Anyway, carry on.
When the Options dialog is open, choose the Mail “tab” from the list of not-really-tabs on the right of the window.
When the Mail not-tab is open, scroll down to the Send messages section and make sure that the option Commas can be used to separate multiple message recipients is selected.
Once it it checked, click OK at the bottom-right of the dialog box to enable and save the setting.
And now, my friends, when you send a message to multiple recipients in the same field, you can use a comma to separate multiple e-mail addresses, much like the same way you would do so if you had any common sense whatsoever, and much like the way you probably did until it didn’t work because Microsoft’s default settings are for brain-dead ex-engineers that get an erection every time the phrases Visicalc, MS-DOS, or ISA card are mentioned. It will work.
There you go. I hope this tutorial was easy to understand, and helped anyone who was having this issue.
Keep checking back on my website for more tutorials. In the future, they’ll be more informative, and less sarcastic and sinister, and I’ll save my vulgar off-topic rants for different posts.
These same instructions should work for Outlook 2007, as well as Microsoft Office Outlook for Devices that are Powered by Electricity and have a Mixture of Solid State and Moving Parts RC2 Live Edition.