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10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0

- Lesson 4 -
Using the Global Address List

 

In this lesson, you learn about e-mail addresses and how to find a user using the Global Address list.

The Purpose of the Global Address List

Before you learn how to create mail messages, it's important that you know about the Global Address List and how to access and use it. The Global Address List is a directory of all users to whom you can address mail. The list is maintained by the administrators of your Exchange system and is stored on the Microsoft Exchange server. In addition to listing individuals, the Global Address List can include folders, and you can send messages or files to those folders.

Displaying the Global Address List

You can access the Global Address List from two places in your Microsoft Exchange Client software: the Tools menu and a message form. The two resulting displays are slightly different in appearance, and there are some differences in the way you use them.

Accessing the List from the Tools Menu

Choose Tools, Address Book to display the Address Book dialog box (see Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 The Address Book dialog box displays the Global Address List.


It's Not the Global Address List Exchange clients can use more than one address book. In the Show Names from the: drop-down list, select Global Address List if necessary) to view that list of names.

You cannot add or delete any names from the Global Address List because it is administered by Microsoft Exchange Server administrators. However, you can use the menu options and toolbar buttons to get information about any user on the list.

You can get additional information about anyone in the list by selecting the user's name and clicking the Properties toolbar button (or by double-clicking the name). The Properties dialog box displays any additional information that is available for the selected user (see Figure 4.2).

From the Properties dialog box, you can obtain the following information about any person on the Global Address List:

  • Distribution List Membership You can find out which distribution lists this member is on by selecting the Member Of tab. (Distribution lists are covered in Lesson 6.)

  • Exact E-Mail Address You can check the exact e-mail address for the user by selecting the E-Mail Addresses tab. This is useful if the user is a custom recipient, not a user from your company. (You'll learn more about e-mail addresses later in this lesson.)

In addition, you can copy any name on the Global Address List to your own personal address list, which you'll learn about in the next lesson.

Figure 4.2 If the administrators have added any optional information to the user information, you can view it.


Custom Recipient A user listed in an address book who is reached through another system (who is not an employee of your company). Someone reached through the Internet, CompuServe, or a mainframe message system such as PROFS is a custom recipient.

Accessing the Global Address List from a Message Form

When you compose a message (by clicking the New Message button), you can display the Global Address List by clicking the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: button in the New Message form (see Figure 4.3). You can select one or more users as recipients of your message. Lesson 7 explains how to select a recipient when you create a new message.

Figure 4.3 Select a user from the Global Address List, and then choose To: to add the user as a recipient for a new message.

Understanding E-Mail Addresses

When you send mail, you're sending it to an address that is unique to the recipient. Likewise, you have a unique address, which a person must know in order to send you mail. Although there are many e-mail address types, Microsoft Exchange Server provides features to ensure that your administrators have a way of establishing whatever address types the users in your company may need.

The e-mail address configured for you is accessible to other users in your company. Like you, they see a list of users when they compose messages, and they can choose your name from the list when they want to send you a message.

However, the list that's displayed when users are working in Microsoft Exchange Client is not really a list of e-mail addresses; it's a list of shortcut references called display names. A display name refers to a user's mailbox the same way that an e-mail address does.

Using the Find Tool

Most companies have a long list of e-mail addresses, and you can click the Find button to speed up the search for a particular user. When the Find dialog box appears, you enter information to help the Find tool locate the user you need (see Figure 4.4). When you're trying to find a user, the more information you fill out, the narrower and faster the search will be. Generally, a user only needs to know the recipient's complete address if he wants to send mail to someone outside of his company; when sending to someone within the company, all he needs to know is the person's alias or display name.

Figure 4.4 Each information box that you fill out helps to narrow the search and make it more efficient.

In this lesson, you learned about the Global Address List that is used to send messages to users inside your company and outside your company. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to create your own personal address list.

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