Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Live@edu
Topic last modified: 2011-11-23
In the cloud-based service, user IDs are formatted like email addresses. In Microsoft Live@edu, the user ID is a Windows Live ID. In Microsoft Office 365, it is a Microsoft Online Services ID.
A cloud-based user signs in to their mailbox using their user ID, and the user ID is also the user's email address. There are occasions, however, when an administrator may want to change a user's email address without affecting their user ID.
When would you want to do this? Suppose you manage the cloud-based organisation for a large university that uses student identification numbers for the user ID, such as 1234567@contoso.edu, but <first name>.<last name> for the email address, such as kim.akers@contoso.edu. The user Kim Akers receives mail sent to 1234567@contoso.edu and kim.akers@contoso.edu, but kim.akers@contoso.edu is the primary "reply to" email address on all messages sent from the mailbox.
You have to use Windows PowerShell to set the primary email address. The user's primary email address appears in the Email Options section of the user's mailbox in the Exchange Control Panel, but you can't modify it there.
Note To change the user ID and primary email address to the same value at the same time, see Rename a Windows Live ID.
Before you begin
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To learn how to install and configure Windows PowerShell and connect to the service, see Use Windows PowerShell.
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Make sure that the primary email address is in an accepted domain that is configured for the cloud-based organisation. For more information, see Accepted Domains.
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Make sure you specify all the existing proxy addresses on the mailbox that you want to keep. When you perform the procedures in this topic, the email addresses that you specify replace all existing proxy addresses on the mailbox. For more information, see Proxy Addresses.
Change the primary email address of an existing user
Run the following command:
Set-Mailbox <Identity> -EmailAddresses SMTP:<new primary e-mail address>,<user ID>,<existing proxy address 1>,<existing proxy address 2>...
For example, suppose your cloud-based organisation and all the user IDs are in contoso.com, and you have configured accepted domains and proxy addresses for all mailboxes in contoso.net and contoso.org. To change the primary email address of a user named Kim Akers with the user ID kakers@contoso.com to kim.akers@contoso.com and to keep the existing proxy addresses on the mailbox, run the following command:
Set-Mailbox kakers@contoso.com -EmailAddresses SMTP:kim.akers@contoso.com,kakers@contoso.com,kakers@contoso.net, kakers@contoso.org
Note You specify the primary email address using the case-sensitive qualifier SMTP. If you don't specify SMTP, the first email address becomes the primary email address.
Change the primary email address for many existing users by using a CSV file
To change the primary email address of many existing users at one time, you need to create and import information about the existing users by using a CSV file. The following procedure imports data from C:\My Documents\ChangeAddress.csv. The CSV file has the following format:
UserID,NewAddress,Proxy1 akol@contoso.com,aylakol@contoso.com,akol@contoso.net tjohnston@contoso.com,tamarajohnston@contoso.com,tjohnston@contoso.net
The column names in the first row of this CSV file (UserID,NewAddress,Proxy1) are arbitrary. Whatever you use for column names, make sure you use the same column names in the Windows PowerShell command.
After you create the CSV file with the existing user IDs, existing proxy email addresses, and new primary email addresses for the users you want to update, run the following commands:
$Users = Import-CSV "C:\My Documents\ChangeAddress.csv"
$Users | ForEach {Set-Mailbox $_.UserID -EmailAddresses $_.NewAddress,$_.UserID,$_.Proxy1}
Note Because this procedure does not use the case-sensitive qualifier SMTP, the first email address that is specified for the EmailAddresses parameter becomes the primary email address.
