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Converting a distribution group to an O365 Group

Copper Contributor

Hi everyone,

 

I am just testing how to convert some of our Distribution Groups to an Office 365 Group, and I am hitting an issue whereby whenever I convert a Distribution Group which has several members, as part of the conversion it is deleting all the members from the new Office 365 Group.  I have tried to do this via the Exchange Admin Centre and PowerShell (using the below commands) and every time it deletes all the members.  Is this by design, or should it be retaining the list of members?

 

PowerShell commands tried:

  1. Upgrade-DistributionGroup -DlIdentities testo365dg@domain.co.uk
  2. New-UnifiedGroup -DlIdentity "Test O365 DG" -ConvertClosedDlToPrivateGroup -DeleteDlAfterMigration
3 Replies
Are you aware of this support article: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/upgrade-distribution-lists-to-office-365-groups-in-outlook-...? Not all the distribution lists / groups are eligible to be converted

Yes, I have read that article thanks.  The distribution group that I tested with "upgraded" to an Office 365 Group without error - it does say this within the article:

 

Distribution lists that fail to upgrade remain unchanged.

 

It does not fail to upgrade, as it removes the Distribution List as part of the process.  So I still don't understand why the list of members gets deleted as part of the transition?

best response confirmed by Robert Milner (Copper Contributor)
Solution

Just to let you know that after raising a ticket with Office 365 support, that they told me that the list of members will get populated after 30 minutes to 1 hour.  I left a test distribution group that I converted to a group for 1 hour, and hey presto the list of members magically appeared!  So, if anyone else is seeing this "issue" - don't panic and just wait for the O365 backend to just catch up.  You might also want to plan when you convert the DG's to Groups as if anyone tries to send an E-Mail to that group as it just being converted, it will not be received by anyone until the list of members gets populated.

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Robert Milner (Copper Contributor)
Solution

Just to let you know that after raising a ticket with Office 365 support, that they told me that the list of members will get populated after 30 minutes to 1 hour.  I left a test distribution group that I converted to a group for 1 hour, and hey presto the list of members magically appeared!  So, if anyone else is seeing this "issue" - don't panic and just wait for the O365 backend to just catch up.  You might also want to plan when you convert the DG's to Groups as if anyone tries to send an E-Mail to that group as it just being converted, it will not be received by anyone until the list of members gets populated.

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