To begin, choose Address Book from the Communicator menu, then choose New List from your address book. 

A new Mailing List window will appear like the one, at left, that will allow you to name your list, and add e-mail addresses to it.  Addresses must be in your Personal Address book before you can put them into a distribution list.  You can begin typing the addressee's name into the list, and Netscape will fill in the address, or you can drag an address from your Address book over into the list.

Once you have saved a distribution list, it will appear as a thread underneath your Personal Address book Directory Servers .

It is very easy to create distribution lists for communicating to students, committees, etc. Easy: In the past, you opened the distribution list (as is shown above), and then you could type in addresses (it will find them intuitively when you type in a few letters of the name) or drag addresses into the distribution list window. This was a little awkward, however, having the two windows open and finding the address in one, and then dragging it to another. Easier: In NC 4.5+, your distribution list folders are shown directly below your Personal Address book. Your personal addresses are shown in the window to the right. Now all you have to do is drag an address and drop it on the distribution list folder. To see what is in a list, select the folder and the names will appear in the right window. If you want to edit these names, double click on the distribution list folder and they will come up in a new window, ready to edit.

 

Class Bulletin Board Distribution Lists: If you have requested an Instructional Bulletin Board to use with a class, when this board is created,  ITS added class sections to the Directory server so an instructor can write messages to all the students of that section without having to create a personal distribution list.  If you have created a class bulletin board, and have a class section attached to it, this section is in the automatic distribution list.  To write to this class section, all you have to do is put the section number in the address box of the mail editor and press return.  The rest of the address will be added automatically.  Be sure to add your own address as another listing underneath the section number if you want a copy of the message returned to you (since you are not a member of the class). These automatic distribution lists are very handy, and automatically add and delete students who enroll late or withdraw.  However, these lists can only be used with class sections that have bulletin boards, for to use a bulletin board, a student must create an MCC e-mail account to use the bulletin board -- so all these students have MCC addresses.  Students in other classes may be using other addresses from outside ISPs like AOL or US West, so it would not be a good idea to create a directory list for these classes.  For these classes, you should create your own personal distribution lists.