O365 – Create Distribution Groups using PowerShell

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In this post, I’ll go through the steps to create distribution groups in O365 using PowerShell.

Before proceeding further make sure you are connected to Exchange Online,

$o365cred = Get-Credential
Connect-ExchangeOnline -credential $o365cred

To create a mail-enabled security group named Managers without specifying any members:

$Name = Read-Host "Enter a name for the DistributionGroup"
New-DistributionGroup -Type "Security" -Name $Name -DisplayName $Name -Alias $Name

To create a mail-enabled security group named Managers with members:

Note: -Member is a ‘MultiValuedProperty’ and as we input users comma seperated, we need to split the (comma-separated) string to get an actual array.

$Name = Read-Host "Enter a name for the DistributionGroup"
$Members = Read-Host "Enter email addresses seperated by comma"
$members = $members -split ' *, *'
New-DistributionGroup -Type "Security" -Name $Name -DisplayName $Name -Alias $Name -Members $Members

To add multiple members to an existing Distribution Group:

$Name = Read-Host "Enter DistributionGroup name to add members"
$Members = "user01@domain.onmicrosoft.com","user01@domain.onmicrosoft.com"
$Members | ForEach-Object { Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity $Name -Member $_}

To import members from a csv and add to an existing Distribution Group:

$Name = Read-Host "Enter DistributionGroup name to add members"
Import-csv "C:\tmp\members.csv" | ForEach-Object {
Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity $Name -Member $_.member
}

To determine existing distribution group members for a distribution group:

To set distribution group to accept messages from authenticated (internal) and unauthenticated (external) senders.

Note: If you don’t specify this parameter while creating the distribution group, the default value is set to ‘true’ meaning messages from unauthenticated (external) senders are rejected.

$Name = Read-Host "Enter DistributionGroup's name to allow external senders"
Set-DistributionGroup -Identity $Name -RequireSenderAuthenticationEnabled $false

To change an existing distribution group’s name:

$Name = Read-Host "Enter name of existing group to be renamed" 
$NewName = Read-Host "Enter new name" 
Set-DistributionGroup -Identity $Name -Name $NewName -DisplayName $NewName -Alias $NewName

Thank you for stopping by. ✌

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