Why do Contact Lists Fail on New Outlook

Question

We recently moved from Rackspace to Gmail as being our email host. I sign in with my gmail into the New Outlook Desktop app, and whenever I added my contacts to a list, it would say 0 members. But if I clicked the pencil (edit) icon, it would say 3 participants.
I even tried emailing the contact list and it just says "Failed to send" and doesn't say why.
This has happened to everyone else at my company when they try to use New Outlook with contact lists.
I've tried searching up fixes and everyone says to just go back to Classic Outlook. But I'm looking for an actual solution since Microsoft wants to deprecate Classic Outlook even though New Outlook has so many issues.
Has anyone found a fix?

Answer 1

Hi Eric Karpus,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A.

Based on your symptoms (Contact List shows 0 members in the message, but the Edit/pencil view shows the correct members, and sending results in "Failed to send"), this behavior may occur when the new Outlook for Windows doesn't properly resolve the Contact List into individual recipients at send-time. This can be more noticeable with Gmail accounts.

Steps that typically fix it:

1. Start a new email and add the Contact List in the To field.
2. In the recipient line, click the "+" next to the Contact List name to expand it into individual addresses.
3. Send the message again.

Once expanded, Outlook can properly resolve recipients and the message should send.

If you don't see the "+", try recreating the list in People (new Outlook) and test again:

• People > create a new Contact List > add members > email it (and expand with "+" if offered)

Alternative: If your "lists" are actually Google Contacts labels or Google Groups, consider using Google Groups (a single group email address) for the most reliable list sending across clients.

Note: New Outlook's support for Gmail accounts is still evolving, and some features (including Contact Lists) may not work as reliably as with Microsoft 365 accounts. If you're using a managed Google Workspace environment, your admin may also want to confirm OAuth/app access settings, though the expand-with-"+" behavior typically points to a client-side recipient resolution issue in new Outlook.

Please let me know if this proves useful to you, or if you would like further assistance.

I'm looking forward to your reply.

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Answer 2

No fix for this specific New Outlook contact list failure is provided in the available context.

The only directly related contact‑list/contact‑folder issues in the context are for Classic Outlook (desktop) and different symptoms:

• Errors creating or editing contacts after a GSuite (Google Workspace) migration are documented for Outlook for Microsoft 365 classic, not New Outlook, and are resolved by a service fix plus a classic‑Outlook‑specific workaround.
• Other contact/address‑book issues in the context (public folder address list errors, People view overlay problems, contact group expansion errors) are all for classic Outlook builds and are addressed either by registry changes, service fixes, or reverting/updating specific Office builds.

None of these documents describe the New Outlook behavior where:

• A contact list shows 0 members in the list view but shows participants when editing, and
• Messages to that list fail to send with a generic “Failed to send” error,
• And this occurs consistently for all users in a tenant using Gmail accounts in New Outlook.

Because the context does not include a documented cause or supported workaround for this New Outlook + Gmail contact list issue, no supported fix can be given from the provided material.

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References:

• Error when trying to create or edit contacts in Outlook: You don't have permission to create an entry in this folder
• Outlook cannot display contacts in People View
• The address list cannot be displayed error when you try to view the contacts of a public folder in Outlook
• Error expanding Contact Group in Outlook Desktop
• Fix problems importing contacts to Outlook
• Unable to sign in or add a Gmail account to classic Outlook