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Change the settings of an address book policy in Exchange Online

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Address book policies (ABPs) allow you to segment users into specific groups to give them customized global address lists (GALs) in Outlook and Outlook on the web (formerly known as Outlook Web App). For more information about ABPs, see Address book policies in Exchange Online.

After you create an ABP, you can view or modify the name and the assigned address lists: the global address list (GAL), offline address book (OAB), room list, and other address lists.

In Exchange Online, you can only modify ABPs in Exchange Online PowerShell.

For additional management tasks related to ABPs, see Address book policy procedures in Exchange Online.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete: Less than 5 minutes.

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

  • To connect to Exchange Online PowerShell, see Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to modify address book policies

To modify an ABP, use this syntax:

Set-AddressBookPolicy -Identity "<ABPName>" [-Name "<Unique Name>"] [-GlobalAddressList "<GAL>"] [-OfflineAddressBook "<OAB>"] [-RoomList "<RoomList>"] [-AddressLists <AddressLists>]

  • The Name, GlobalAddressList, OfflineAddressBook, and RoomList parameters all take single values, so the value you specify replaces the existing value.

    This example modifies the ABP named "All Fabrikam ABP" by replacing the OAB with the specified OAB.

    Set-AddressBookPolicy -Identity "All Fabrikam ABP" -OfflineAddressBook \Fabrikam-OAB-2

  • The AddressLists parameter takes multiple values, so you need to decide whether you want to replace the existing address lists in the ABP, or add and remove address lists without affecting the other address lists in the ABP.

    This example replaces the existing address lists in the ABP named Government Agency A with the specified address lists.

    Set-AddressBookPolicy -Identity "Government Agency A" -AddressLists "GovernmentAgencyA-Atlanta","GovernmentAgencyA-Moscow"

    To add address lists to an ABP, you need to specify the new address lists and any existing address lists that you want to keep.

    This example adds the address list named Contoso-Chicago to the ABP named ABP Contoso, which is already configured to use the address list named Contoso-Seattle.

    Set-AddressBookPolicy -Identity "ABP Contoso" -AddressLists "Contoso-Chicago","Contoso-Seattle"

    To remove address lists from an ABP, you need to specify the existing address lists that you want to keep, and omit the address lists that you want to remove.

    For example, the ABP named ABP Fabrikam uses the address lists named Fabrikam-HR and Fabrikam-Finance. To remove the Fabrikam-HR address list, specify only the Fabrikam-Finance address list.

    Set-AddressBookPolicy -Identity "ABP Fabrikam" -AddressLists Fabrikam-Finance

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-AddressBookPolicy.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully modify an ABP, replace <ABPName> with the name of the ABP, and run the following command in Exchange Online PowerShell to verify the property values:

Get-AddressBookPolicy -Identity "<ABPName>" | Format-List