Create a Mail Contact
Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2
Mail contacts are mail-enabled Active Directory objects that contain information about people or organizations that exist outside your Exchange organization. Each mail contact has an external e-mail address.
Looking for other management tasks related to mail contacts? Check out Managing Mail Contacts and Mail Users.
Prerequisite
If you want to create a new mail contact in a domain that is different than the one in which your Exchange servers reside, you must first prepare that domain for Exchange 2010. To learn more about preparing a domain for Exchange 2010, see Prepare Active Directory and Domains.
What Do You Want to Do?
Use the EMC to create a mail contact
Use the Shell to create a mail contact
Use the EMC to create a mail contact
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Mail contacts" entry in the Mailbox Permissions topic.
In the console tree, click Recipient Configuration.
In the action pane, click New Mail Contact.
On the Introduction page, under Create a mail contact for, select one of the following options.
New contact This button is selected by default. Click this button to create and mail-enable a new contact. If you click this button, you'll need to provide the required account information for the contact on the Contact Information page of this wizard.
Existing contact Click this button to mail-enable an existing contact in Active Directory. Click Browse to open the Select Contact dialog box. This dialog box displays a list of all contacts in the forest that aren't mail-enabled. Select the contact that you want, and then click OK to return to the wizard.
If you selected New Contact in Step 3, complete the following fields on the Contact Information page. Otherwise skip to Step 5:
Specify the organizational unit rather than using a default one Select this check box to select an organizational unit (OU) other than the default (which is the recipient scope). If the recipient scope is set to the forest, the default value is set to the Users container in the Active Directory domain that contains the computer on which the Exchange Management Console is running. If the recipient scope is set to a specific domain, the Users container in that domain is selected by default. If the recipient scope is set to a specific OU, that OU is selected by default. To select a different OU, click Browse to open the Select Organizational Unit dialog box. This dialog box displays all OUs in the forest that are within the specified scope. Select the desired OU, and then click OK. To learn more about recipient scopes, see Understanding Recipient Scope.
First name Use this box to type the contact's first name. This field is optional.
Initials Use this box to type the contact's initials. This field is optional.
Last name Use this box to type the contact's last name. This field is optional.
Name Use this box to type a name for the contact. This is the name that's listed in Active Directory. By default, this box is populated with the names you enter in the First name, Initials, and Last name boxes. If you didn't use those boxes, you must still type a name in this field. The name can't exceed 64 characters.
Alias Use this box to type a unique alias (64 characters or less) for the contact. This field is required.
External e-mail address To specify the external e-mail address, perform one of the following tasks:
To specify a SMTP e-mail address, click Edit. In the SMTP address dialog box, type the SMTP e-mail address.
Note
Exchange validates SMTP addresses for proper formatting. If your entry is inconsistent with the SMTP format, an error message will be displayed when you click OK.
To specify a custom e-mail address, click the arrow next to Edit, and then click Custom Address. In the Custom Address dialog box, use the E-mail address box to type the e-mail address and the E-mail type box to specify the e-mail type. For example, you can specify an X.400, GroupWise, or Lotus Notes address.
On the New Mail Contact page, review your configuration settings. To make changes, click Back. To create the new mail contact, click New. Click Cancel to close the wizard without creating the new mail contact.
On the Completion page, review the following, and then click Finish to close the wizard:
A status of Completed indicates that the wizard completed the task successfully.
A status of Failed indicates that the task wasn't completed. If the task fails, review the summary for an explanation, and then click Back to make any configuration changes.
Click Finish to close the wizard.
Use the Shell to create a mail contact
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Mail contacts" entry in the Mailbox Permissions topic.
This example creates a mail contact for Ted Bremer.
New-MailContact -Name "Ted Bremer" -ExternalEmailAddress ted@tailspintoys.com -OrganizationalUnit contoso.com
This example mail-enables an existing contact named David.
Enable-MailContact -Identity David -ExternalEmailAddress David@thirdcoffee.com
For More Information
Managing Mail Contacts and Mail Users
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