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John Gruber's avatar
John Gruber
Brass Contributor
Dec 06, 2017
Solved

How do I add a guest mail user to adress lists or create a mail contact using the same email address

Hello,   I'm trying to create a mail contact for an external user so we can add the user to an address list. Unfortunately, I can't create the contact because the primary smtp address is taken by...
office 365
  • VasilMichev's avatar
    VasilMichev
    Dec 07, 2017

    To be honest, it's a bit of a mess as you can actually have the same address added twice:

     

    [10:36:59][Login script]# Get-Recipient tempxxx@abv.bg | Ft Name,RecipientType*

Name                RecipientType RecipientTypeDetails
----                ------------- --------------------
temp                MailContact   MailContact
tempxxx_abv.bg#EXT# MailUser      GuestMailUser

    The "trick" is to have the contact first, then provision the Guest account. Doesn't really make much sense to me, but TonyRedmond seems to see the logic in all this and perhaps can explain it better :)

     

Elham Karshenas's avatar
Elham Karshenas
Copper Contributor
Jan 16, 2019

I know it might be a little late but I share the solution here just in case :)

 

  • By default external Azure AD guest accounts are hidden from Global Address List.
  • External azure AD gues account cannot be added to distribution lists but it can be added to O365 groups, SharePolint and MS Teams
  • An email contact can be added to distribution lists but it cannot be added to O365 groups, sharepoint or MS teams.

 

There are two ways to show external Azure AD guest accounts in Address lists. Depending on the usage you may follow one of these steps:

  

  • If you are using an email contact: The email address MUST be added to office 365 as a mail contact before adding that user as a guest to Azure AD. The opposite is not possible.
  • If you are not using an email contact: Using this PowerShell command you can show guest emails in GAL, without adding them as email contact: 

 

                        Set-AzureADUser -ObjectId [of guest account] -ShowInAddressList $true

 

Using the PowerShell command you don't need to delete guest account to add it first as email contact. Not sure why, but Mictosoft likes to make simple things  a tiny bit more complicated ;)

Jeff Shelp's avatar
Jeff Shelp
Copper Contributor
Aug 23, 2022
This was the way to go for us, easy. One thing though, I had to include the additional values if the user didn't already have them, seems they are required.

Set-AzureADUser -ObjectId cfcbd1a0-ed18-4210-9b9d-cf0ba93cf6b2 -ShowInAddressList $true -GivenName 'Megan' -Surname 'Bowen' -DisplayName 'Megan Bowen' -TelephoneNumber '555-555-5555'

For details, see "Add guests to the global address list" in the Microsoft 365 per-group guest access article. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/per-group-guest-access

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