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Recipient filters for address lists in Exchange Online PowerShell

  • Article

Recipient filters identify the recipients that are included in address lists and GALs. There are two basic options: precanned recipient filters and custom recipient filters. These are basically the same recipient filtering options that are used by dynamic distribution groups and email address policies.

  • Precanned recipient filters

    • Uses the required IncludedRecipient parameter with the AllRecipients value or one or more of the following values: MailboxUsers, MailContacts, MailGroups, MailUsers, or Resources. You can specify multiple values separated by commas.

    • You can also use any of the optional Conditional filter parameters: ConditionalCompany, ConditionalCustomAttribute[1to15], ConditionalDepartment, and ConditionalStateOrProvince.

    You specify multiple values for a Conditional parameter by using the syntax "<Value1>","<Value2>".... Multiple values of the same property implies the or operator. For example, "Department equals Sales or Marketing or Finance".

  • Custom recipient filters: Uses the required RecipientFilter parameter with an OPATH filter.

    • The basic OPATH filter syntax is "<Property1> -<Operator> '<Value1>' <Property2> -<Operator> '<Value2>'...".

    • Double quotation marks " " are required around the whole OPATH filter. Although the filter is a string (not a system block), you can also use braces { }, but only if the filter doesn't contain variables that require expansion.

    • Hyphens (-) are required before all operators. Here are some of the most frequently used operators:

    • and, or, and not.

    • eq and ne (equals and does not equal; not case-sensitive).

    • lt and gt (less than and greater than).

    • like and notlike (string contains and does not contain; requires at least one wildcard in the string. For example, "Department -like 'Sales*'".

    • Use parentheses to group <Property> -<Operator> '<Value>' statements together in complex filters. For example, "(Department -like 'Sales*' -or Department -like 'Marketing*') -and (Company -eq 'Contoso' -or Company -eq 'Fabrikam')". Exchange stores the filter in the RecipientFilter property with each individual statement enclosed in parentheses, but you don't need to enter them that way.

    • For more information, see Additional OPATH syntax information.

For more information about address lists, see Address lists in Exchange Online.

For address list procedures that use recipient filters, see Address list procedures in Exchange Online.