Jason Slater Weblog

Distribution lists are very handy for providing a common incoming email address that can be delivered to a number of users. The members of a distribution group can often be managed dynamically, adding new users to receive email and removing others as necessary. Replying to an incoming email that arrived via a distribution list can add complications as the from and return address will often be the individual user mailbox.

With this in mind, it can be useful to send an email from a distribution group to provide both a consistent communication path and to ensure that further replies are delivered back into the distribution list.

Using Exchange 2007 and Windows 2003 one of the common ways of achieving this is to create a distribution list, assign the recipients of the distribution list then apply the Send-As right to allow the users to send from this address.

The Send-As right can be applied in one of two ways, either using the Active Directory Users and Computers management interface.

The other way of assigning this right is using the Exchange Management Shell and applying the command:

get-distributiongroup groupname | add-adpermission -user username -extendedrights Send-As

When sending an email the user then uses the From field:

It would have been useful to include a tab in Exchange 2007 to allow group members of a distribution list to send from the distribution list email address - to keep things simple, but where would the fun in that be?

One problem you may find frustrating, at least I did, was that the user may receive a warning preventing them from sending email from the distribution list email address.

If you have assigned the right as mentioned above then the best advice I can give you is simply to wait. It can take a long time for the right to become active (on our setup it took forty minutes!) and in that time I checked so many settings and fiddled with things here and there - but all that was required was a little patience.