Mailing List /  Distribution List

Mailing lists are a great way to allow a group of people to communicate with each other easily. People write to a single address, and that message then gets distributed to everyone on the list. Here at Whitman mailing lists are used all the time for organizations and classes.

As an example, let's say a person wants a mailing list for his DUCK friends. The person's username is quinerm, and he wants the list name to be ducks. Here's what they would do:

With MS OUTLOOK:

Making a basic mailing list is very easy in MS Outlook, where they are called distribution lists. Anyone using Outlook can create his or her own mailing list!

  1. First, you need to get the email addresses of the people to be included in your list.
  2. Second, you need to make sure all those email addresses are in a contact list that you have access to.
  3.  You need to place all those addresses in your distribution list and give it the name.
  4. All done! To use the new list, mail is sent to duck@whitman.edu.

More details:

·        Click on the “Contacts” icon in Outlook

·        Ctrl-Shift-L for a new distribution list

·        Type in the name of the distribution List

·        Click on the “Select Members” icon

·        Select the member’s names from your Contact list or from the LDAP

·        Click on the “Save and Close” icon

·        Use as any other item in your Contact list

Things to remember:

·        You can only use this distribution list from your machine –

·        Other people can’t use this distribution list

·        You must have the email address of the individuals already in your contacts (or in the ldap)

If you need to share your distribution list, or if you need access to it from other machines you should consider setting up a .qmail mailing list.

 With .qmail:

Making a basic mailing list is very easy in .qmail. Anyone with a marcus account can create their own mailing list!

  1. First, you need to get the email addresses of the people to be included in your list.
  2. Second, you need to create a text file that and these addresses in it.
  3. This file needs to be placed in your home directory on Marcus and named .qmail-duck (That first period is important, and notice that the name of the list follows the dash.)
  4. All done! To use the new list, mail is sent to quinerm-duck@whitman.edu

Making the text file

The key to the mailing list is obviously the list of addresses to send mail to. You need to make a text file that holds all of the addresses of the people on your list (including you). The name of the file must be like this: .qmail-listname where listname is the name of your list. The period at the beginning is very important!

The .qmail-listname file contains one email address per line... like this:

smith@whitman.edu
john@whitman.edu
jason@whitman.edu
joe@whitman.edu

The absolute easiest way to make the text file is to log in to your account on marcus and use a text editor like pico or vi. This way you don't have to worry about ftp or weird file formats.

 

If you choose to use a program on your PC like Word, you have to be sure you save your file as a text-only file. To do this in your program, go to the File menu and choose Save As.... This will bring up the Save window that you're probably used to seeing. Near the bottom of this window is a menu labeled Save as Type. In this menu, choose Text Only, name the file .qmail-listname (where listname is the name of the list you want), and save it somewhere you can find it. You will have to know where it is so that you can move it to Marcus later.

Placing the file in the right spot

As mentioned above, the easiest way to place the file is to just make it on Marcus, then you don't have to worry about placing it :) You only have to give it the right name...

To move it to your marcus account, you need to use an FTP program like WS_FTP or Fetch. To log into your account, you need to give your ftp program the following information:

If you're on a PC and you've logged in, you will see a list of files and directories on your personal machine on the left side of the screen and the files and directories on marcus on the right. Find the .qmail-listname file you created earlier in the box on the left (you probably need to search a little for it). Once you've found it, click on it, then click on the button in the middle of the window that has an arrow pointing to the right. This copies the file from the left-side of the window (your machine) to the right-side of the window (marcus). If you need to rename the file, right-click on the file and select rename... give it a name of .qmail-listname.

 

 

 

 

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