How to allow outside senders on a set of Distribution Groups

Issue:  You need to allow mail from outside senders to all or a large set of Distribution Groups using the Exchange Management Shell rather than modifying each group one by one using the GUI Exchange Admin Center or Management Console.

distribution-group-delivery-senders-inside-organization

outside senders setting in Exchange Admin Center

Solution:
Use Management Shell commands to search for any distribution groups or dynamic distribution groups that match a phrase and modify the Outside Senders setting.
Note: you will need to specify your group name you want to search for followed by a “*” wildcard in all of the example commands.

Commands to create and test a search query before modifying any settings:
Get-DistributionGroup -identity GROUPNAME*

Get-DynamicDistributionGroup -identity GROUPNAME*

Command to enable outside senders on a set of Distribution Groups:
Get-DistributionGroup -identity GROUPNAME* | Set-DistributionGroup -RequireSenderAuthenticationEnabled $False

Command to enable outside senders on a set of Dynamic Distribution Groups:
Get-DynamicDistributionGroup -identity GROUPNAME* | Set-DynamicDistributionGroup -RequireSenderAuthenticationEnabled $False

 

Related

12 thoughts on “How to allow outside senders on a set of Distribution Groups

  1. Salim Zeidan

    Hi chris, i am wondering if i can choose a specific outside sender to send to a Distribution Group and block the rest to send to this Distribution Group, because the above configuration will allow anyone to send to the Distribution Group.

    Reply
  2. B

    This does not work. Emails still fail. When I ran the command it said “command completed successfully but no settings of distribution groups/distrogroupname have been modified.
    Next setting it to $true and then re-running it as $false and testing emailing to the group from the outside continues to fail.

    Reply
    1. Chris Harris Post author

      I would recommend checking and verifying the setting “senders inside and outside my organization” using the Exchange Admin Center GUI, then confirm the email aliases for said distribution group using the GUI and make sure you are emailing your tests to that exact distribution group email alias. I would also check your spam filter which may be sync’ing with AD and not pulling the distribution group in as an allowed recipient, since distribution groups are a different type of object from user accounts / mailboxes.

      Reply
  3. cheslin Coetzee

    we recently migrated to office 365 so i created a group on my online portal, but i cannot send or receive emails from external recipients, get failure mail

    Reply
    1. Chris Harris Post author

      Hi Cheslin, if you follow the steps in the article then it will make it so your distribution group can receive email from senders outside your organization (internet senders).

      Reply
      1. cheslin coetzee

        I have done some research and due to the current set up of the hybrid environment, and the mail flow set up, this makes sense why distribution groups would not receive external email. Once the MX records are pointing to 365 then this should work, I believe this will be updated soon.
        My guy at the data centre says I can only allow mail from outside senders to all or a large set of Distribution Groups using the Exchange Management Shell when the migration is done, is this correct?

        Reply
        1. Chris Harris Post author

          You can allow outside senders to send to a single distribution group or multiple distribution groups. As soon as mail is flowing to your Office 365 (Exchange Online), then the distribution groups will be able to receive external email. If you are running a hybrid configuration, then your Office 365 distribution groups will be able to receive external email as soon as email routing connectivity is in place between your Exchange on-premise and your office 365. For example a message would go: MX Record > Exchange On-Prem > Office 365 Distribution Group > Office 365 Distribution Group Members.

          Reply
          1. cheslin Coetzee

            Hi Chris

            thanks for the help worked, I have a problem with rules upload, client request rules quota to be increased, we increased it to 256 max, and he is still getting upload failed even thought the quota has been increased. any help or any site you can refer me to for assistance.

            Reply

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