September 13, 2025

Create groups of email addresses in Mutt

If you don’t already have a file with aliases, create one:

$ touch ~/.mail_aliases

You also need to tell Mutt’s configuration file, ~/.muttrc to use the file ~/.mail_aliases to store and retrieve aliases:

# File where Mutt stores and retrieves aliases 
source ~/.mail_aliases
set alias_file=~/.mail_aliases

Then, in the file ~/.mail_aliases, if you want to create a group, say, group1 with the following email addresses person1@example.com, person3@example.com, person4@example.com, write:

alias group1 <person1@example.com>, <person3@example.com>, <person4@example.com>

If you want to create another group, say, group2 with email addresses person1@example.com, person2@example.com, person5@example.com, write:

alias group2 <person1@example.com>, <person2@example.com>, <person5@example.com>

Now, if you want to address group1, all you have to do is write group1 when Mutt prompts you to fill the To: field in Mutt’s command-line, e.g.:

To: group1
<return>

On the next screen, the To: field should be populated with:

<person1@example.com>, <person3@example.com>, <person4@example.com>

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