Adding Members
Members can be added to a mail-enabled, universal group using powershell commands.
Extract details of the members from an existing group using the Get-DistributionGroupMember command. You can limit the information obtained to a single field e.g. PrimarySmtpAddress. The following command will do just that –
Get-DistributionGroupMember cmc-team |select PrimarySmtpAddress |Export-Csv cmc-addr.csv
The file it produces will be of the form –
#TYPE Selected.Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.Management.ReducedRecipient
“PrimarySmtpAddress”
“a.manager@qub.ac.uk”
“f.bloggs@qub.ac.uk”
“j.soap@qub.ac.uk”
You need to produce a CSV file in the same format to add a list of members to a group. Import the CSV file to the group as follows –
Import-Csv cmc-addr.csv | foreach {add-distributiongroupmember -Identity cmc-team -member $_.PrimarySmtpAddress}
Note: If you have a list of staff IDs instead of addresses you need to use the SamAccountname attribute instead. The CSV file needs to be in the following format –
#TYPE Selected.Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.Management.ReducedRecipient
“SamAccountName”
“1234567”
“7654321”
“1212343”
The import command in this case would be –
Import-Csv cmc-sam.csv | foreach {add-distributiongroupmember -Identity cmc-team -member $_.SamAccountName}
Hiding List Membership
Sometimes you do not want recipients of messages sent via mail-enabled groups to be able to expand the recipient list. Do the following to hide the recipients –
- Open Active Directory Users and Computers console.
- Click View Menu and select Advanced Features (to enable it)
- Find your Distribution List or Security Group (mail enabled) in the OU. DO NOT search for your group because if you open the DL/Group properties from search windows, it will NOT show the Attribute Editor which is the advanced feature).
- Double click to open the DL/Group to see the properties. Go to Attribute Editor tab.
- Find hideDLMembership attribute, double click to open and select True. Click OK twice to close the dialog boxes.
It takes a while to take effect the changes while Exchange generates Offline Address Book and Outlook installations retrieve it.