How to send bulk email in Outlook: 3 ways to mass email, step by step

The short answer: to send bulk or mass email in Outlook so that each person gets their own email, individually and with their own name, use a mail merge. You write the email once in Word, connect an Excel list, and Word sends one separate email per row through Outlook. If it's a quick note to a group and the email doesn't need to be personal, put the addresses in Bcc instead.

I build cold email software, and an Outlook mail merge is often the first thing people try before they look for a tool like ours. So this guide is what I'd tell a friend who asked how to do it: the exact steps, what each method can't do, and how many emails Microsoft lets you send. Everything about Outlook here comes from Microsoft's own help pages, checked on 9 October 2026. I also ran the mail merge myself on 29 October 2026 with Word and Outlook 2019 on Windows 11, and the screenshots below are from that test.

Three ways to send bulk email in Outlook

If you're wondering how to send mass email in Outlook that still feels personal, it's the first one. Let's start there.

Way 1: Outlook mail merge from Excel, step by step

An Outlook mail merge is really a Word feature. Word writes the emails and hands them to Outlook, which sends them from your account. You need three things before you start:

• Word and the classic Outlook for Windows. Word's mail merge sends through classic Outlook, and the new Outlook can't run it yet (more on that below). To tell which one you have, look for a Send / Receive tab at the top: classic Outlook has it, the new Outlook doesn't (both have File now, so that's no longer a test). The new one also has a bar of app icons down the left side, with Word and Excel in it. If you're on the new one, turn off the "New Outlook" switch in the top corner to go back to classic. No switch means classic Outlook isn't installed; it comes with the desktop Microsoft 365 apps.
• Outlook set as your default email app, signed in to the account you want to send from.
• An Excel list with column names in the first row, such as FirstName, Email and Company, and one person per row. Every row needs an email address.

The steps in Word for Windows

1. Make your list in Excel: column names in row 1, one person per row. Save it and close Excel, because Word can't read the file while Excel has it open. Keep column names to one word, like FirstName. Word turns spaces into underscores: my first test sheet had a space after the name and Word listed the column as "FirstName_".

   

2. Open a blank document in Word and go to Mailings > Start Mail Merge > E-mail Messages.

   

3. Go to Mailings > Select Recipients > Use an Existing List and pick your Excel file and the sheet your list is on (usually Sheet1$). If you can't find the file, look on your Desktop: Excel saved mine there, not in Documents.

   

4. Click Edit Recipient List to check who's in. Untick anyone you want to leave out.

   

5. Write your email. Where you want a person's name, click the small arrow under Insert Merge Field and choose the column, for example FirstName. You can add any column this way, such as their company.

   

6. Click Preview Results and step through a few people with the arrows. Look for empty names and odd spacing now, while it's easy to fix.

   

7. Go to Finish & Merge > Send Email Messages.

   

8. In To, choose your Email column. Type the Subject line, leave Mail format on HTML, and keep Send records on All.

   

9. Click OK. Outlook sends one email per row. You'll see them in Sent Items, each addressed to one person.

What happened when I clicked OK

My laptop had the new Outlook set up, and classic Outlook 2019 installed but never used. So instead of sending, Word opened classic Outlook's Add Account window: classic Outlook needs an email account of its own before Word can send through it.

For an Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 address, the Office 365 option signs you in. A Gmail address needs IMAP and a Google app password, and Outlook 2019's connection test hung on the IMAP step for me, so I didn't get to the send. If you hit the same wall, either set up classic Outlook with an Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 account, or use one of the ways below.

On a Mac, the steps are the same until the end, where you choose Mailings > Finish & Merge > Merge to E-mail and then Mail Merge To Outbox.

What an Outlook mail merge can't do

• No attachments from Word for Windows. Put a link to the file in the email instead. (Word for Mac can send the whole document as an attachment, but then the email itself has no text.)
• No Cc or Bcc. Every email goes to exactly one person.
• One subject line for everyone. You can't put a name in the subject.
• No follow-ups. It sends once. If someone doesn't reply, writing again is up to you.
• Everything goes out at once, as fast as Outlook can send it, which matters with the limits further down.

Way 2: Bcc, to send mass email without showing addresses

If the email doesn't need names in it, Bcc is the fastest way, and nobody sees who else got it.

1. Start a new email. In classic Outlook, go to Options > Bcc to show the Bcc line. In the new Outlook and on the web, click Bcc at the end of the To line.
2. Put your own address in To and paste everyone else into Bcc, separated by semicolons.
3. Write the email and send it.

Everyone gets the same email, and a reply comes only to you. The catch is that it reads exactly like what it is, a message sent to a crowd, and there's a cap on how many people one email can go to (see the limits below). It's fine for "the office is closed on Friday". It's not how you'd write to a potential client.

Way 3: a contact group for people you email often

If you write to the same people again and again, save them once as a group:

• Classic Outlook: open People, then Home > New Contact Group. Add the members and click Save & Close.
• New Outlook and Outlook on the web: open People, then Home > New contact list. Name it, add people by email address and click Create.

Next time, type the group's name in Bcc. Everyone still gets the same email, so it's Bcc with less typing. Microsoft counts every member of a personal contact group separately toward your sending limits.

How to send a mass email individually in Outlook

People mean two different things by "individually", and Outlook handles them differently.

• Each person gets their own copy and can't see the others. Both ways above do this. A mail merge sends one separate email per row of your list, and Bcc hides the list from everyone. Only the mail merge can put each person's name in the email.
• Each person gets an email written for them, not the same paragraph with a name swapped in. Outlook can't do this on its own, because it only fills in fields from your list. That takes a tool that writes each email for the person, which is what the last part of this guide is about.

Can you send bulk email in the new Outlook?

Not with Word's mail merge, at least not yet. Word hands the emails to Outlook through a connection only the classic Outlook for Windows has. If you try with the new Outlook, Word either opens classic Outlook or the merge seems to finish and nothing is sent. The same goes for Outlook on the web.

The new Outlook has a basic mail merge of its own that sends separate copies of one email, but it can't fill in each person's name. Microsoft's roadmap lists an advanced version for the new Outlook and Outlook on the web that fills in personal details for each person, which Microsoft planned for September 2026. Roadmap dates move, so if you don't see it in your Outlook yet, use classic Outlook for now. Bcc and contact groups work the same in both.

Outlook sending limits: how many emails you can send

Microsoft limits how many people you can email in a day and in one message. These are the numbers on its own pages:

A mail merge to 300 people counts as 300 recipients. Microsoft also says plainly that its business email "isn't suited to accommodate bulk-mailing scenarios", and an account that sends a lot of similar emails to strangers can be blocked well before it reaches these numbers. Treat them as a ceiling, not a target. For emails to people who don't know you yet, a safer pace is about 50 a day from one inbox, a few minutes apart. That's the limit we build into PersonaSend.

When a mail merge is the wrong tool

A mail merge works well when people expect to hear from you: clients, members, guests, your team. It works badly for cold email, meaning a first email to someone who doesn't know you. Swapping a first name into the same paragraph doesn't make an email personal, and both readers and spam filters can tell. There are no follow-ups and everything goes out at once, so replies tend to be rare.

There's a legal side too. In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act says commercial emails need a working way to opt out and your postal address, and a Word merge won't add either for you.

That gap is what we built PersonaSend for. You upload the same Excel or CSV list and describe what you're offering once. The AI then writes a different email for each person, based on what your list says about them and, if you like, their company's website. You read and approve the emails, then PersonaSend sends them from your own Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 inbox at a safe pace, each one individually, with follow-ups, an unsubscribe link and your postal address. You connect Outlook with "Sign in with Microsoft", so PersonaSend never sees your password, and it works with the new Outlook too because nothing goes through Word. Paid plans start at $19 a month for 1,000 emails. If you'd like to see the difference first, the free bulk email sender writes personal emails for up to 5 people with no sign-up, and our cold email templates show what a good first email looks like.

If you're comparing tools for this, how to choose cold email software has the questions worth asking, ours included.

Questions people ask

How we wrote this, and our sources

We make PersonaSend, so we're not a neutral reviewer, and we'd rather say that up front. To keep this fair, every fact about another product comes from that company's own pages, checked on 9 October 2026, and we say where those products do something we don't. Prices and limits change often, so check the links below before you rely on them, including ours.

• Microsoft Support: use mail merge to send bulk email messages
• Microsoft Support: sending limits in Outlook.com
• Microsoft Support: create a contact list or contact group in Outlook
• Microsoft Learn: Exchange Online limits (Microsoft 365 business)
• Microsoft 365 roadmap: mail merge for the new Outlook (item 423047)
• FTC: CAN-SPAM Act, a compliance guide for business
• PersonaSend pricing