Sometimes you may find creating an audience in Studio easier by simply copying and pasting a list of emails into the query builder. Reasons for this can range. Here's a highlight of some common use cases:

• You want to be able to edit the list of users after creating the audience, but "import" creates a static snapshot that cannot be edited
• You want to avoid creating users
• You do not have the first and last names required for the user import file

Copy and Paste Emails into Advanced Query

All users must have an activated profile on the user's page in order for this solution to work. If your users do not have a profile on the user's page, then we cannot reach out to them.

Note that this solution requires that you have a list of the users by unique identifier, and for this article we are focusing on email. You can adapt this solution to copying and pasting other unique identifiers, just make sure to adjust the "email:" string in your formula.

1. Open your preferred spreadsheet software and create a new sheet.
2. Enter all email addresses into Column A in your spreadsheet. 
3. In Column B, to the right of the first email value, enter the formula ="email:"&A2&" OR". This is a concatenation that will combine specific text with the email values so that we end up with email:employee@firstup.io OR for every user that you need to add to this audience.
   • The example assumes you enter a header in cell A1 such as "email address". The exact header does not matter for this solution. If your list has no header, your formula may say ="email:"&A1&" OR". 
     
4. Replicate the formula down Column B so that every email value is captured.
5. Select and copy all values in Column B.
6. Sign into Studio, navigate to People > Audiences.
   • If creating a new audience, click the + Audience button.
   • If updating an existing audience, edit the audience.
     
     
     
     
     
7. Click More and select Advanced query builder.
   
   
   
   
8. Delete the asterisk (*) or any other existing text.
   
   
   
   
9. Paste your copied text from Column B into the query field.
10. IMPORTANT: remove the very last OR. Your query is not valid if it ends with OR.
    
    
    
    
11. Enter a name and description for your audience and click Save.
    
    

Troubleshoot Query

If you are having issues with your query being detected as valid, check the following:

• All caps "OR" between all email values
  • email:rachel.king@firstup.io OR email:angela.frey@firstup.io
• Confirm there is no trailing OR at the end of the last formula. See step #10 above.
• Make sure there are no single quotes such as email:'rachel.king@firstup.io'.
  • Either omit quotation marks or use double quotation marks such as email:"rachel.king@firstup.io".
• Remove any leading spaces, e.g. email: "angela.frey@firstup.io". 
  • The correct format would be email:"angela.frey@firstup.io".