How to Create a New Distribution Group

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3

This topic explains how to use the Exchange Management Console or the Exchange Management Shell to create a new distribution group in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Note

By default, all new distribution groups require that all senders be authenticated. This prevents external senders from sending messages to distribution groups. This default setting is different from previous versions of Exchange where, by default, new distribution groups accepted messages from all senders. To configure a distribution group to accept messages from all senders in Exchange 2007, you must modify the message delivery restriction settings for that distribution group. For more information about configuring message delivery restrictions, see How to Configure Message Delivery Restrictions.

Before You Begin

To perform the following procedures, the account you use must be delegated the following:

• Exchange Recipient Administrator role

• Account Operator role for the applicable Active Directory containers

For more information about permissions, delegating roles, and the rights that are required to administer Exchange Server 2007, see Permission Considerations.

Important

If you want to create a new distribution group in a domain that is different than the one in which your Exchange servers reside, you must first prepare that domain for Exchange 2007. To learn more about preparing a domain for Exchange 2007, see How to Prepare Active Directory and Domains.

Procedure

To use the Exchange Management Console to create a new distribution group

1. Start the Exchange Management Console.

2. In the console tree, expand Recipient Configuration, and then click Distribution Group.

3. In the action pane, click New Distribution Group. The New Distribution Group wizard appears.

4. On the Introduction page, click New Group, and then click Next.

5. On the Group Information page, complete the following fields:

   • Group Type   Click Distribution.

   • Organizational unit   By default, the New Distribution Group wizard displays the Users container in the Active Directory directory service. To change the default organizational unit (OU), click Browse, and then select the OU you want.

   • Name   Type the group name you want.

   • Name (pre-Windows 2000)   Type the group name for the group that is compatible with the legacy versions of Microsoft Windows (prior to the release of Windows 2000 Server). This field is automatically populated based on the Name field. This field is required.

   • Alias   By default, the alias is the same as the group name. You can modify the name in this field.

6. Click Next.

7. On the New Distribution Group page, review the Configuration Summary. To make any configuration changes, click Back. To create the new distribution group, click New.

8. On the Completion page, the Summary states whether the distribution group was successfully created. The summary also displays the Exchange Management Shell command that was used to create the distribution group.

9. Click Finish.

To use the Exchange Management Shell to create a new distribution group

• Run the following command:

  New-DistributionGroup -Name "Managers" -OrganizationalUnit "Contoso.com/Users" -SAMAccountName "Managers" -Type "Distribution"
  

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see the New-DistributionGroup reference topic.

For More Information

For more information about the Exchange Management Shell, see Using the Exchange Management Shell.