How to Pick Recipients From Your Address Book in Gmail

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by Heinz Tschabitscher
An independent writer who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
Updated June 10, 2019

Gmail makes it really easy to select a contact to email since it auto-suggests the name and email address as you type. However, there's another way to pick which contacts to email, and it's by using your address book.

Using your contact list to pick the recipients of an email is helpful if you're adding lots of people to the email. Once you're ready to go, you can just select as many recipients and/or groups as you like and then import all of them into the email to immediately start composing a message to all of those contacts.

How to Hand-Pick Recipients to Email in Gmail

Start with a new message or enter into the "reply" or "forward" mode in a message, and then follow these steps:

  1. To the left of the line where you'd normally type an email address or contact name, select the To link, or Cc or Bcc off to the right side if you want to send a carbon copy or blind carbon copy.

    Gmail select To link

  2. Choose the recipient(s) you want to include in the email, and they'll immediately starting grouping together at the bottom of the Select contacts window. You can scroll through your address book to select contacts as well as use the search box at the top of that screen.

    Gmail contacts window

    To remove contacts you've already selected, just select their entry again or use the small "x" next to the entry at the bottom of the Select contacts window.


  3. Press the Insert button at the bottom when you're done.

    Gmail contacts selected

  4. Compose the email as you normally would, and then send it off when you're ready.

    Gmail with contacts added