Emailing Google Contact Groups

There are quite a few threads posted in the Gmail Help Community seeking guidance on ways to email Google Contacts groups or as Google calls them, Contact Labels. So, in this blog, we take a look at the various ways we can do that, namely:

1. Via the Google Contacts web UI.
2. Via the Google Contacts Android app.
3. Via the Gmail Compose autocomplete UI.
4. Via the Gmail Compose Contact picker option.

Section 1: Via the Google Contacts web UI.

The Google Contacts web UI refers to the https://contacts.google.com/ page for that specific Google account. 

In there: 

• Select the Contact group or label you wish to email from the left panel (shown as 1)
• Select a single contact from the list by clicking on the check box to its left.
• Check on the down arrow next to the Select box above (shown as 2), and select All. This should select all Contacts.
• Click on the Send email (envelope, shown as 3) icon. This will bring up the Gmail Compose window with all the contacts entered as To recipients.

Put in the subject and the contents of the message and click on the blue Send button. 

Section 2: Via the Google Contacts Android app.

This requires the Google Contacts app, available only for Android devices - (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.contacts&hl=en_IN&gl=US) installed on your device. 

Open the Contacts app and tap on the 3-bar (hamburger) menu option at the top-left.

The created Contact Groups or labels would be visible. Tap the one you wish to send emails to.

This will show the list of contacts for that Contact Group or Label. Tap on the 3-dot (overflow/more) icon and tap on the Send email option.

Doing so will display the Choose contacts screen. By default, the first email address for every contact will be checked for insertion in the Gmail compose To recipient section. If you wish to add another email address, simply tap to check/uncheck the boxes for those email addresses. Once done, tap on the Check icon on the top right.

We're now taken to the Gmail compose screen with the contacts included in the To recipients section. 

Put in the subject and the contents of the message and click on the Send icon. 

Section 3: Via the Gmail Compose autocomplete UI.

To use this method, sign into Gmail and open the Gmail Compose window by first clicking on the Mail icon in the Gmail left panel and then clicking on the Compose button (shown as #s 1 and 2 in the first screenshot for this section).

Once the Compose window opens, start typing the Google Contacts group or label name you wish to send the message to in any of the recipients' sections. When you see the Group or label name in the autocomplete list, click on it to enter the names (shown as #3 in the first screenshot below).

Once the names of the Google Contact Group or label are entered in the recipients' section (highlighted by the red rectangle in the screenshot below), put in the subject and the content of the message and click on the blue Send button. 

Section 4: Via the Gmail Compose Contact picker option.

Open up the Gmail Compose window and then click on either the To/Cc/Bcc link that shows Select contacts on hover (shown as #3 in the screenshot below).

It will launch the Select contacts pop-up window. In there, select the Contact Group or label you wish to send the message to (shown as #4), check the box for Select all (shown as #5) and finally click on Insert (shown as #6) to insert all selected contacts in the To recipients' section. If we had clicked on the Cc/Bcc link, the contacts would have been inserted in that recipients' section.

After that, include the message's subject and content and click on the blue Send button.

Note: While there are 25 contact entries, there are 36 email addresses for those 25 contacts.

If you have any queries related to this topic, please let me know in the comments.