Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2

Topic Last Modified: 2011-04-28

You can mail-enable existing contact objects in Active Directory by populating their Exchange attributes (such as the contact's alias and external e-mail address).

Note:
This procedure doesn't create new contacts in Active Directory.

To mail-enable existing contacts, at a minimum you must provide external e-mail addresses. When mail-enabling several contacts in bulk, it's easier to first export the list of contacts to a .csv file, and then add the external e-mail addresses to the .csv file by using a text editor such as Notepad, or a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Office Excel. You can then use the updated .csv file in your bulk mail-enabling operation.

Looking for other management tasks related to managing mail contacts and mail users? Check out Managing Mail Contacts and Mail Users.

Use the Shell to mail-enable multiple existing contacts

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.

Note:
You can't use the EMC to mail-enable multiple existing contacts.
  1. This example exports the list of existing contacts in your organization that aren't mail-enabled to the .csv file ContactsList.

    Copy Code 
    Get-Contact | Out-File "C:\ContactsList.CSV"
    The resulting .csv file will be similar to the following:

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    #TYPE System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject,
Name
Kim Abercrombie
Don Funk
Sanjay Patel
Amy Strande
...
  2. For each contact, add a column heading and the external e-mail addresses to the .csv file. The updated .csv file should look similar to the following:

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    #TYPE System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject,
Name,ExternalAddress
Kim Abercrombie,Kim@contoso.com
Don Funk,Don@fabrikam.com
Sanjay Patel,Sanjay@fabrikam.com
Amy Strande,Amy@contoso.com
...
  3. This example imports and uses the data in the .csv file so you can mail-enable the contacts in bulk.

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    Import-CSV "C:\ContactsList.CSV" | ForEach-Object {Enable-MailContact -Identity $_.Name -ExternalEmailAddress $_.ExternalAddress}

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Get-Contact or Enable-MailContact.