Topic Last Modified: 2011-04-28
Mail users are mail-enabled Active Directory user accounts that contain information about people who exist outside your Exchange organization. To learn more about mail users, see Understanding Recipients.
Mail users are similar to mail contacts. Both have external e-mail addresses and contain information about people outside the Exchange organization. The main difference is mail users have security contexts that can be used to log on to the Active Directory domain and access resources to which they have been granted permission. For example, you may want to create mail users for short-term consultants who need access to your server infrastructure but will use their own external e-mail addresses.
When you select Mail Contact under Recipient Configuration, the result pane displays a list of all mail-enabled contacts and users in your Exchange organization.
 Note: |
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| You can also use the Exchange Management Shell to manage all aspects of mail users. For more information, see Recipient Cmdlets. |
To focus on a set of items in the result pane that have specific attributes, you can use a variety of expressions to filter the list. For more information about filters, see Filter the Result Pane.
When you select a mail user in the result pane, the following actions are available either by right-clicking the mail user name or by using the action pane.
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| If you select multiple recipients in the result pane, the following actions will be available only if your selection contains a single recipient type. If you don't see any actions available, it is an indication that your selection contains both mail contacts and mail users. |
- Disable
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Click Disable to remove all mail attributes from the Active Directory user account. The user account will no longer be mail-enabled, but it will remain in Active Directory.
For more information, see Managing Mail Contacts and Mail Users.
- Remove
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Click Remove to remove the user from Active Directory.
Important:When you remove a mail user, not only is the mail configuration deleted, but the associated user account in Active Directory is deleted as well.
- Send Mail
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Click Send Mail to send an e-mail message to recipients by using the Exchange Management Console. Select the recipient or multiple recipients in the result pane, and then click Send Mail in the action pane. You must configure an e-mail account on the computer from which you are sending mail.
Note:You can only send mail to multiple selected recipients if they are all of the same recipient type. You can send mail to the following recipient types:
- User Mailboxes
- Mail Contacts
- Mail Users
- Dynamic Distribution Groups
- Distribution Groups
You cannot send mail to resource mailboxes.
- User Mailboxes
- Properties
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Click Properties to view or change the settings for the selected mail user.
Note:This action is not displayed if more than one mail user is selected in the result pane. For more information, see Configure Mail User Properties.