Seeking help using custom groups

I am hoping someone can help me. Here is what I want to achieve:
I want to be able to be able to easily (with a custom email distribution list) email our former members who are still living in the area (and not email those who have moved away).
My thought was to create a custom group of "former members who moved" (thinking I could pull those names out of the list and be left with just the local people) but all that did was put a check mark next to those people's names on the list of Former Members. What is the best way for me to achieve this?

Plus, when I did this, I noticed some unexpected results. When I created the custom group, I couldn't find where anyone else would see that my custom group had been created. When I go to "Email and Contact forms," the group's email does not show up.
When I go to "Membership Management," a new tab with the group name is not created.
The only way I can see that my new custom group exists is if I go to the tab in "Membership Management" that the custom group was made from (in my case, my custom group is a subset of Former Members), and click on "Select group" and then I'll see a check mark next to the names of those people in the list who are part of this custom group. Can you help me understand this better so others can see that a group has been created if I decide to pursue this?

Also, is there a limit on the number of groups we can have?
Any input is appreciated. The info I found online for custom groups did not address these points.

Juliet
Manitalkers Toastmasters #1350396
manitalkers.toastmastersclubs.org

The lists should in the Email and Custom forms module are pretty well defined and can easily be listed. With custom groups, if I listed them there, they are really your groups that i will not have any information to define them there. All I could do is just show a raw list... I am not sure how helpful that would be, so I decided not to show them there until we could come up with a reasonable approach for that.

Custom groups are not really the same as the parent lists from which they are derived. Essentially, custom groups are sub-sets that do not get their "own tab" The parent lists are fixed, and each has certain characteristics that define them. For example, people on the former members list may have role history.

You can see custom groups defined for any parent list in Membership Management by just using the Select by Group drop-down. It shows the available custom groups and if you pick one, the corresponding members will be shown as checked.

A key thing to understand is that custom groups are just implemented as a type of user defined "tag" for members. The group does not "exist independently" of its members. For example, it is impossible to create or maintain an empty group.

Steve,
Thanks for the clarification on custom groups.

Do you have an idea of how I can meet my need to have a separate email distribution list for just former members who still live in the area, or do I need to do that outside of our website (in a database or Excel spreadsheet)?

Juliet

Just create a custom group from the former members list. Simple.