Windows 7: Windows Live Mail won't send email to categories

"Send Email" option is grey (unselectable) for all my contact categories. I can manually enter category in To, CC or BCC of a new email, but it will not send them. I have run the Windows Essential Repair option from Control Panel - Uninstall/Repair and this has not solved the problem, nor did a reboot. Any other suggestions?

Hello and welcome Aaron I am just a touch confused by what you are trying to do I have a list on contacts and I open a new message and type the first letter of the subject to who I mailing to and it gives me a list of all the contacts with that first letter.

I just click on the one I want to send to from the drop down list that I want and it enters the address automatically. Same thing for copies to.

Now having said that the other thing is are you saying you cannot get the Email message button to open a new message because it is greyed out??

What version of Windows Live Mail are you using?
Can you include a screen print of the issue you see?
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums

I have WLM 2012 and here is what I see when I select the Favorites category.
The Send button is enabled, and there is no "Send Email" in the Options tab.

It's Windows Live Mail 2012. As you can see in the screen capture, if you right click on any category (silly name for a group), there are 4 options (Edit, Delete, Create and Send Email). If I do that on any of my categories, the send email option is grey, indicating that I can't do so.

Second capture shows that I can call for a category when creating a new email, but when I send it, it does not send email to the people in that category.

OK, I see what you are saying now.
My WLM works the same way, the Send email is disabled.

Playing with this I found SOMETIMES I can click on the + next to the Category name in a new message and it replaces the Category Name with all the Individual recipient names.
It seems quite flaky, as sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't!

It doesn't solve your issue, but you're not the only one seeing this.
To me it seems WLM is buggy with this...

Thanks for that! Hitting the + button is working like you said for me. Hopefully that works until they come up with a fix in an update.

You're welcome.

Maybe someone with an older version of WLM will see this thread and let you know if an older version works correctly with this.

Hiyya David and Aaron have both myself and no sign of the + I either of the 12 on this machine and the 11 on my Sandy Bridge so I am intrigued on how you got it to show.

I just type the first letter in it gives me a list to pick form and so on and so on

Hello ICit2lol,

My main client is Outlook and I have never used WLM categories before, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

It looks like "Favorites" is a built-in default category for WLM 2012.
If you type "f" into "To...", do you see Favorites listed?



To add or edit categories, open the Contacts window.
Categories are listed under Contacts in my screen print.
You probably need to add some contacts to the Favorites (or any) category to see how it really works .

Hello David as you can see in the pic (sorry poor quality) I type the "f" in and get that in the pic including Favourites and a list of contacts that begin or are associated with "f"

Now if I type into "To" with "s" or "t" or "m" etc etc just depends on what letter you start with depends as to what list will drop down. So "s" might yield Soapworks Ltd and "st" might yield Stephen Bloggs "v" = Vista forums "j" = any contact starting with a J - John or Jan or Joshua or Joinery Works etc etc all those beginning with the initial letter you type in. It also lists those addresses that are associated with the letter so "s" includes an address that may start support@......

If I want to see the entire contacts list I go to the bottom of the page - left hand side as in the pic and click Contacts and it pulls up the complete listings

I add contacts either from the email if I know it I safe and also manually.

This process is exactly the same for the 2011 and 2012 WLM.