Windows Live Mail won't send email to categories

[AaronHur]

"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?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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??

 

[DavidE]

What version of Windows Live Mail are you using?
Can you include a screen print of the issue you see?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

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.

 

[AaronHur]

WLM 2012 won't send email to categories

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.

 

[DavidE]

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...

 

[AaronHur]

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.

 

[DavidE]

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.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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

 

[DavidE]

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 .

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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.

 

[DavidE]

Hello ICit2lol,

Can you somehow select a contact category for a "Send To category" ?
That's what AaronHur wants to do in the OP (as I understand it).

In Post # 8 you stated

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 tried to explain how I got a category with the + in the To... field.

In your New Message screen print in post #10, what happens if you click Favorites in the list you see?
Does it add + Favorites in the To field?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I don't know if I have it right David but if I type f and then right click on Favourites it asks if I want to add a contact from the listings to I suppose the favourites category. Is that what is needed?

 

[DavidE]

Somehow you are getting to the Contacts / Category window in your last screen print.

Don't open the Contacts window...Open a new Email message window?

The Category window does not open when I do this:

• Click on Email Message (in the WLM Home Tab) to create a New message.
• That opens the New Message window.
• Type "f" into the To... field.
• Left click on Favorites.
• That inserts + Favorites into the New Email To... field

 

[Slartybart]

The send eMail option on the alternate menu is intentioanlly greyed out. The object in the navigation pane is not considered a contact. It would be nice if you could do that, but perhaps the programmer couldn't figure out how to differentiate between categories and the all contacts object.​

There is a way to do it outside of a msg though.
In the Contacts window, maximize the ribbon and right click the Email icon
select add to Quick Access Bar (QAB)

​

Now you can highlight the category and just clcik the Email icon on the QAB
A new msg window is displayed that has the TO: fieild populated with recipients in the categaory.

If your theme makes it hard to see the QAB, try placing it below the ribbon (right clcik the toolbar area)

See http://www.sevenforums.com/browsers-mail/269743-live-mail-compact-quick-views.html for more about QAB.

 

[robinb9]

hey guys there is a known bug in wlm 2012 that does not allow you send group contacts
Microsoft is aware of this and it is taking them over 6 mths to fix it

So sometime what you need to do is log out of WLM- log back in and pray- maybe it will send
this works ON and off

take a gander here Windows Live Mail Essentials 2012 will not allow group contacts - Microsoft Community

I have and others have been complaining about this problem for over a year

Also if you uninstall WLM 2012 and install WLM 2011 the problem is gon e

 

[robinb9]

and, you can make the group contacts with no problem, you just cannot send the catagory at all

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Now I think I get what you mean now if I pick Favourites then any contacts that are in Favourites all get the same message?

 

[robinb9]

This only happens in WLM 2012
Lets say you make a category called : My special friends

You put 10 names in it ( of course each one has an email address in it)
Now you open an email to send
In the to, bcc or cc ( does not work in ether one)
You click on one of them, find the group category you created: my special friends
You click send. You get a message ( I am typing this on an iPad so I do not have the image I took but it is on the Microsoft site) that it has no recipient to send to
Click on the+ symbol in front of the group to see all the email addresses, there is nothing there
But if you go to the category itself, all the names and email addresses are all there
I only have 2012 on a test machine because I am working with Microsoft to figure this out
I have sent them logs and other files they have asked for but it has been almost a year and they still have not figured it out

 

[DavidE]

+1 @robinb9 - Thanks for the explanation - it works for me.

I uninstalled WLM 2012 and then re-installed WLM 2011.
I can send to a Category with WLM 2011.

The "Send email" is not enabled in the Contact/Category window, but I can select a Category in an email message and send it!

I can also click the + sign in the Email message and it translates the Category to the email recipients reliably...

 

[robinb9]

Sometimes it will send the group category email list if you log out of WLM close the program, re open and log back in. But this only works if you have a live mail account
I have WLM on another computer with a non live mail account. It is set up on a comcast account only, I do not lo into live mail and it does the exact same thing, will not send the category, comes up with the same stupid message