I’ve been doing some work with marketing lists today and came across a confusing issue.

After converting a dynamic list to a static list so that one of our marketing users could selectively remove contacts for a marketing email, we realised we couldn’t use the ‘Manage Members’ functionality as it simply froze when processing any sort of query against members. After some head scratching we figured out why.

The Fix

1. Delete the static list if it exists.
2. Access the original dynamic marketing list.
3. Click ‘Copy to Static’ again.
4. Before saving ensure that the ‘Locked’ field is set to No.

This will allow you to then modify the list as required.

It’s a strange oversight on Microsoft’s part not to warn a user that a list is locked at any point even if you overlook the fact you can’t change the ‘Locked’ field after it’s saved.