Create a New External Contact

Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Live@edu

Topic Last Modified: 2012-02-14

External contacts represent people outside your organization who can be displayed in the shared address book and other address lists. External contacts have e-mail addresses outside your organization. They don't have a mailbox in your organization and they can't sign in to your domain.

External contacts are great because they let you maintain an up-to-date organization-wide repository for contacts and help your users collaborate more efficiently with people outside your organization.

Note:
Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses has a limit of 50 external contacts.

To create a new external contact, follow these steps:

1. In the Exchange Control Panel, select Manage My Organization > Users & Groups > External Contacts > New.
   
2. Enter the following information:
   
   • First name, Initial, Last name   These fields aren't required and they don't appear in the address book.
     
   • * Display name   This name appears in the address book, on the To: and From: lines in e-mail, and in the External Contacts list in the Exchange Control Panel. It's required. You can enter the first and last name of the contact here too.
     
   • * Alias   An alias is used to identify the external contact. The contact's alias is required and is a unique identifier for this external contact in your organization.
     
   • * External e-mail address   Enter the outside e-mail account of the external contact here. It's required. E-mail sent to this contact is forwarded to this e-mail address.
     
3. When you're finished, click Save.