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I've managed to set up Office 365 and am using the Exchange capabilities.
Is there any documentation (couldn't find any) that talks about how to use and set up Global Address Lists (GAL)? I'm a nube on this... and a user, not someone with any past Exchange admin experience.
I'm using Outlook '07 (Office '07 overall) and sending and receiving email works. But I don't understand how to use GAL. I want to have a set of email addresses that any O365 user in my account can also use. I've seen the external contacts page in the Admin part of 0365. Looks like I can add addresses there one by one. Of course I have a couple hundred already sitting in an Outlook contact list. Is there some way that I can push 90% (or all) of those into a GAL for all too see?
Happy to read docs if there is a pointer.
Thx!
Hello Gabi,
Small Business subscribers can now use Remote PowerShell, so you should be able to use instructions at help.outlook.com/.../cc952755.aspx to connect to your account and import those contacts.
Hello Thu,
I actually answered this question in another thread recently, here's what I listed there:
If you'd like to import a list of contacts into your Global Address List, you'll need an Enterprise subscription. In Enterprise, you can use Remote Powershell to take advantage of the New-MailContact cmd-let. If you create a script you can import all of your users from that CSV file quite easily.
Did you have any other questions about your GAL? It actually gets built for you automatically, from your user objects, contacts, and distribution groups. Once those items are added they'll automatically show up in your GAL.
Hi Thx,
Does your problem has been resolved?
Best Regards,
Reken Liu
This is another example of how such a basic requirement from any business cannot be executed unless you have the Enterprise package.
Why the heck should you need to have the Enterprise package simply to be able to import contacts into the GAL.
P1 should have this.
Hi, since PowerShell can be a bit tough to learn for the small business admins/users i have created an app that will import this via PowerShell but in forms based gui that will then run the command in PowerShell. It’s a complete Office 365 app that will manage everything that is able to do in PowerShell for 365. So it does loads of more stuff than only importing contacts.
Please check my blog for more info and betasignup www.ultimate-communications.com/psm-powershell-master
I will also list the app in the 365 app store when available
I'm trying to upload a list of contacts from Outlook2007 to the GAL in Office365. I'm going to use Powershell (even though I've never programmed before). I have a couple of questions: our contacts have many fields of information besides name and email which is all Office365 shows, such as phone numbers, addresses, notes, etc., will O365 accept all these fields? If yes, can someone show me what such a script would look like? Thnx
Hello 365TEST,
You can import those contacts in Remote PowerShell. Use the New-MailContact to import the contacts with just a small amount of their data, and then use the Set-MailContact cmd-let to update those contacts to include all of the rest of the data you have for them. You can read about those cmd-lets here:
technet.microsoft.com/.../bb124519.aspx
technet.microsoft.com/.../aa995950.aspx
I don't see how set-mailcontact can do this. For example, how can I enter street, city, state, cell phone? I don't see them as parameters for either cmd-let. Can you help? I have the same request.
Jeff
Hello Jeff,
Anything that you can't set with the Set-MailContact cmd-let you can set with the Set-Contact cmd-let and vice versa. Each has a different set of attributes they can control.
That works, thanks!
I'm sure you're a powershell master by now, and in case you have other padawans looking to you for answers, perhaps this resource can help importing external contacts into your GAL: www.datacenternext.com/exchangeonlineexternalcontacts