Add External Email to a Distribution List in Exchange Online

You may find a need to send an External Email to a Distribution List in Exchange. We always think of DL’s in Exchange as primarily internal but technically you can set up a list that only goes to external recipients,

A good example is sending a notification to a group of external recipients on a regular basis and you don’t want your users to address them individually each time.

This is similar to creating a list for a resource, but externally.

How do you create a DL for external recipients? It is quite easy. You create Mail Contacts and add them into an internal DL.

Here’s how:

Create an External Email to a Distribution List in Exchange

1. Open the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
2. From the Users Pane, select Contacts.
3. Click Add Contacts
4. Enter the details of the external contact. If you only want the contact(s) to only be used in the DL, check Hide from my organizations global address list:

• Once you have the external contacts you want to use for the DL, go to the Active Teams and Groups pane, click Distribution list tab and click Add a Group:

• Follow the wizard:

Choose Distribution

Assign an owner to the DL

Add the contacts you created in Step #4

Give the DL a name. Decide whether or not you want people to send email to this DL

When you are done, click Create Group:

Voila. You have created a DL that your company can use that sends to External recipients. You can also do this using Exchange online but it easy to set this up using the Microsoft Admin Center too.

The good thing about M365 is that there is a lot of functionality in it. If you look in the right places you will find out how to do most tasks well enough to administer your tenant effectively.

Happy IT’ing

Dan