Display the member count of a Contact Group

Count Contact Group Members buttonIn Outlook, there is no direct way to find out how many members have been added to a Contact Group (sometimes also known as Distribution Lists).

Apparently, the Outlook Team doesn’t like to count things as Outlook also can’t display the amount of selected items.

A workaround is to save the Contact Group as a txt-file and get the line count. A more sophisticated way is to use a VBA macro as demonstrated in this guide.


CountDLMembers macro

Visual Basic buttonThe CountDLMembers macro allows you to get the member count of a selected Contact Group directly from your Contacts folder or from the window of an opened Contact Group.

The result is shown in a dialog box.

Message box output of the CountDLMembers macro.
Message box output of the CountDLMembers macro.

Quick Install

  1. Download this code-file (countdlmembers.zip) or copy the code below.
  2. Open the VBA Editor (keyboard shortcut ALT+F11)
  3. Extract the zip-file and import the CountMembers.bas file via File-> Import…
    If you copied the code, paste it into a new module.
  4. Sign your code so you won’t get any security prompts and the macro won’t get disabled.
  5. Add a button for easy access to the macro or press ALT+F8 and select the macro you want to execute.

You can add a button for the macro to the main Outlook window or the Contact Group window.
You can add a button for the macro to the main Outlook window or the Contact Group window. 

Macro code

The following code is contained in the zip-file referenced in the Quick Install. You can use the code below for review or manual installation.


Click in the area above and press CTR+A to select all. Press CTRL+C to copy the code.