Share via

Create an offline address book in Exchange Online

  • Article

An offline address book (OAB) is a downloadable address list collection that Outlook users can access while disconnected from Exchange Online. An OAB allows Outlook users to access the information within the specified address lists while disconnected from Exchange Online. Admins can decide which address lists are made available to users who work offline.

For additional management tasks related to OABs, see Offline address book procedures.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes.

  • By default, the Address List role isn't assigned to any role groups in Exchange Online. To use any cmdlets that require the Address List role, you need to add the role to a role group. For more information, see Modify role groups.

  • You can only use Exchange Online PowerShell to perform the procedures in this topic. To connect to Exchange Online PowerShell, see Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.

Tip

Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at Exchange Online or Exchange Online Protection.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to create an OAB with web-based distribution

This example creates an OAB named OAB_Contoso that contains the default global address list.

New-OfflineAddressBook -Name "OAB_Contoso" -AddressLists "\Default Global Address List"

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-OfflineAddressBook.