Why is it not easy to create, share and update automatically a list of email addresses

Julie Jeffery 1 Reputation point
2021-11-05T14:47:16.35+00:00

Being a non-techhy and working for a very small company using Office 365 Exchange I find it almost impossible to find instructions to create an address book that has all team members contacts included and for this to be accessed by everyone from one place. Also when a new contact is emailed for this to be automatically added to the address book?

All I find is computer code or long explanations on how to create lists, contacts, groups and so on, but non is making any sense

Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server: A family of Microsoft client/server messaging and collaboration software.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
7,787 questions
0 comments No comments
{count} votes

3 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Andy David - MVP 152K Reputation points MVP
    2021-11-05T16:23:29.62+00:00

    If you are using Office 365, then all the contacts should be created in Exchange Online and viewable via any mail client in the address book.

    How are you creating team member contacts now?

    1 person found this answer helpful.

  2. Andy David - MVP 152K Reputation points MVP
    2021-11-05T16:36:17.107+00:00

    The Offline Address book is from Exchange Online and the Outlook client syncs it locally.

    You can view/add/delete users in the portal
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business-video/add-user?view=o365-worldwide


  3. Kael Yao-MSFT 37,691 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-11-08T08:01:20.59+00:00

    Hi @Julie Jeffery

    As Andy mentioned, if you would like to maintain a contact list on the Exchange side, you can create contacts in the Exchange Admin center.
    147239-20.png
    You can see the list in All Contacts in the Address Book.
    147283-21.png


    If you would like to have users maintain their own contact lists in Outlook, and being able to share their lists with other organization users, you may need to have users share their contacts with each other.
    Here is a link on this topic for your reference: Share a contacts folder with others


    Another workaround I could think of is to create a specific shared mailbox or use a existing mailbox and assign the editor permission of the contact folder to all users.
    Then all users can see the contact folder and add their own contacts to this folder.


    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".
    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.


Your answer

Answers can be marked as Accepted Answers by the question author, which helps users to know the answer solved the author's problem.