Simple e-mail address book

Hi All,
I need a small bit of assistance from any IT gurus out there... please...
I want to set up a small database consisting of name, address, phone, e-mail, etc. which I can share with a group of people and which can be used to send e-mails to the e-mail addresses therein. Can I use a simple comma-delimited or excel file to do this? How can I get Gmail, etc. to "see" this file and use it? Many Thanks for any help....

Thanks for the pointer to the Gmail help page but I had already seen it and it didn't quite fit my needs. I was hoping to be able to send mails directly to the recipients in the csv file without having to import them into Gmail, part of the reason being that other people with whom I hope to share this may not use Gmail. Also, when I import the file into Gmail, it picks up the e-mail address and name correctly but the other columns (address, phone, etc.) are stored as comments and not populated correctly into the correct fields. Is there a specific order for these columns? Thanks.

Are you using MS outlook? or are you working directly with gmail through a web browser?

Will it be sent from the same email address everytime?

Thanks for your replies.....
Are you using MS outlook? - No.
Are you working directly with gmail through a web browser? - Yes.
Will it be sent from the same email address every time? - On mp pc, yes
(from my Gmail a/c) but if I give the list/file to another person in the group, it needs to be sent from their e-mail account, which may or may not be hosted by Gmail.
Thanks again.

Ask your colleagues to use G-mail.....wouldn't that fix all your headaches?