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Managing Outlook contact lists

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Posted on by Jronash

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We have a couple of contact lists, (currently in SharePoint) that we keep up to date with a Power Automate flow. The users who need those lists can connect it to Outlook and easily email the people they need to.

But it looks like Microsoft is moving away from this approach. You can't sync a SharePoint contact list to Outlook anymore, unless you're using both a Classic SharePoint list, and the Classic version of the Outlook desktop app. If you switch either the list or the desktop app to Modern, the option goes away.

So I'm trying to be forward thinking and switch my method to whatever Microsoft is currently pushing. Problem is, I can't seem to find another option.

You can do some things in Power Automate using Outlook Contact Folders, but I don't know if those can be shared and it doesn't look like they are present in Modern Outlook either, so they don't seem like a good option. Modern Outlook seems to want you to create Contact Lists instead of Contact Folders, but you can't access those lists from Power Automate.

Does anyone have a solution to a similar situation? I.E.:

I need a contact list that can be updated via Power Automate
I need to be able to share it with specific co-workers
It needs to be accessible from Modern Outlook.

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Anchov 1,986 on at

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Based on your requirement, I would recommend looking into Microsoft365 Groups to meet your needs.

Does anyone have a solution to a similar situation? I.E.:

I need a contact list that can be updated via Power Automate
Power Automate can maintain Microsoft365 Groups using a standard connector (add members, removed members)

I need to be able to share it with specific co-workers
Multiple people can be assigned as owner of a group to use and maintain membership

It needs to be accessible from Modern Outlook.
If can be used and maintained from Modern Outlook

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Rick Hurt

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Jronash 827 on at

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Yes, I'm wondering if Groups might be my only option.

Only reason I'm not excited about it is that these contacts are all external people, and only a few staff need access to the lists. From what I've seen, if I want to use PA to add them to groups, I'd first need to add them as a contact or a guest user in our system. I'm still considering whether I think that's worth it in this case.

Thanks for the idea!

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Anchov 1,986 on at

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Yeah, that's a tough one. There are Outlook 365 distribution lists that can handle external users, but doesn't look like there is a way to update using Power Automate.
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Add-users-to-distribution-list-using-flow/td-p/1412895

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VictorIvanidze 13,073 on at

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But you can execute a GRAPH request: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51827823/add-member-to-distribution-list-using-microsoft-graph

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Jronash 827 on at

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@VictorIvanidze
Great suggestion - unfortunately we don't manage our distribution groups in the cloud yet. I'll look into whether it's an option to manage some in the cloud and some on-prem without causing problems.

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Jronash 827 on at

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Had some more time to look at this today. Unfortunately, even for a cloud-based distribution group, you can only add people who already exist in your environment. So in my case I'd still have to add all of these people either as guest users or contacts before I could use REST to add them to my distribution group.

Add members - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn

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