Create a Public Group

Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Microsoft Exchange, Live@edu

You can use the Public Groups I Own pane to create your own public group, which is a collection of two or more people. The group you create here appears in your shared address book for others to use. As a group owner, you can restrict membership to the group.

How do I create my public group?

1. From Outlook Web App, click Options > See All Options on the toolbar at the top of the window.

2. Under Groups > Public Groups I Own, click New.

3. In the New Group dialog box, enter the following information.

   General	Use this section to enter the display name, alias, and description for the group, and to add group owners.
   Display name	This information is required. Enter a name for the group. The group name appears in the address book and on the To: line when e-mail is sent to this group. The display name should be user-friendly so people will recognize what the group is about.
   Alias	The alias is the name part of the e-mail address that appears to the left of the at (@) symbol. For example, if the display name of your group is Drama 101, you might name your alias drama101. If your domain name is contoso.edu, senders would send messages to drama101@contoso.edu. You need to include an alias, and it can't contain any spaces. The alias can contain letters from A to Z (uppercase or lowercase), digits from 0 to 9, !, #, $, %, &, ', *, +, -, /, =, ?, ^, _, `, {, |, } or ~. One or more periods may be included in an alias, but each period should be preceded and followed by at least one of the other characters.
   Description	Enter a meaningful description of the group in this box. This tells people what the group is for. People in the address book can see this information when they double-click a group to try to join it.
   Ownership	Use this section to add owners for your group. When you create a group, you're automatically added as its owner. A group must have at least one owner.
   Owners	To add one or more people or groups from your address book as co-owners, click Add. In the Select Owner dialog box, select a person or group, double-click the item, and then click OK to add the item to the Owners box.
   Membership	Use this section to add people to your group or remove people from your group.
   Members	To add members to the group, click Add. In the Select Members dialog box, select a person or group from the address book. After you've selected a person or group, double-click the person or group and click OK to add them to the Members box.
   Membership Approval	Use this section to specify whether approval is required for people to join or leave the group.
   Set one of these approval options for people who want to join the group:	Open: Anyone can join this group without being approved by the group owners.   This is the default setting. Closed: Members can be added only by the group owners. All requests to join will be rejected automatically. Owner Approval: All requests are manually approved or rejected by the group owners.   If you select this option, the group owner or owners receive an e-mail message from the person requesting approval to join the group.

4. When you've finished, click Save. (Refresh Public Groups I Own if you don't see the group listed immediately.)

What else do I need to know?

• You can add owners, but you can't remove your ownership from a group after you create it.