Applies to: Live@edu
Topic Last Modified: 2011-05-19
You can hide a user's contact information from the shared address book to help satisfy some of the privacy and compliance requirements of acts such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in the United States or the Data Protection Act in Europe. Users can't configure this setting for their own profiles, but an administrator can assign the GalDisabledMailboxPlan mailbox plan to a mailbox so the user's contact information is hidden.
Here's how you do it in a Live@edu organization:
Hide new users from the shared address book
Use the Exchange Control Panel
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Select Manage My Organization > Users & Groups > Mailboxes > New.
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In the Mailbox plan drop-down list, select GalDisabledMailboxPlan.
Use Windows PowerShell
To learn how to install and configure Windows PowerShell and connect to the service, see Use Windows PowerShell in Exchange Online.
Run the following command:
New-Mailbox -Name <Name> -WindowsLiveID <Windows Live ID> -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString -String '<Password>' -AsPlainText -Force) -MailboxPlan GalDisabledMailboxPlan
For example, to hide a new user named "Tamara Johnston" with the Windows Live ID tjohnston@contoso.edu and the password Pa$$word1, run the following command:
Hide all new users
Want to hide all new users you create? Make GalDisabledMailboxPlan the default mailbox plan by running the following command:
For more information, see View and Set a Default Mailbox Plan.
Hide existing users from the shared address book
Use the Exchange Control Panel
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Select Manage My Organization > Users & Groups > Mailboxes.
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In the Mailbox list, select the mailbox to modify and click Details.
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In the Mailbox Settings section, select GalDisabledMailboxPlan from the Mailbox plan drop-down list.
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Click Save.
Want to reverse this procedure? See Unhide users from the shared address book.
Use Windows PowerShell
To learn how to install and configure Windows PowerShell and connect to the service, see Use Windows PowerShell in Exchange Online.
Run the following command:
For example, to hide the user tamaraj@contoso.edu from the shared address book, run the following command:
Hide many existing users
See Assign a Mailbox Plan to Many Users' Accounts with Windows PowerShell in Live@edu. Simply use the value GalDisabledMailboxPlan with the MailboxPlan parameter.
Things to consider
Here are a few known issues and best practices.
E-mail applications for hidden users
The GalDisabledMailboxPlan prevents Microsoft Office Outlook from connecting to the mailbox using Outlook Anywhere. However, Outlook can connect to the mailbox using POP or IMAP. Hidden users can use Outlook Web App, POP3, IMAP4, and Exchange ActiveSync clients to connect to their mailboxes.
Hidden users and groups
An Exchange Online administrator can create distribution groups that include hidden users. However, we recommend against it because, depending on the e-mail client being used, hidden users may be visible in the properties of the group.
If you want to include hidden users in public groups but are concerned about user privacy, consider using dynamic distribution groups. The membership of a dynamic distribution group is calculated every time that a message is sent to the group. This calculation is based on filters and conditions that you define. For more information, see Dynamic Distribution Groups.
How mailbox plans affect users
Assigning a mailbox plan to a mailbox does much more than hide the user's contact information from the shared address book. Make sure you know how the mailbox plan will affect the user before you assign a mailbox plan. For more information, see Mailbox Plans.
Unhide users from the shared address book
To make users visible in the shared address book, simply change the user's mailbox plan from GalDisabledMailboxPlan to DefaultMailboxPlan, using either the Exchange Control Panel or Windows PowerShell.
