Members of a dynamic distribution group in an Exchange hybrid deployment don't receive email messages

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Exchange Online, Exchange Server 2013 Enterprise, Exchange Server 2013 Standard Edition

Original KB number:   3061396

Symptoms

You have a hybrid deployment of Exchange Online in Microsoft 365 and on-premises Exchange Server. In this environment, certain members of a dynamic distribution group do not receive email messages. Senders also do not receive a non-delivery report (NDR). However, if a sender manually adds the user to the To field of an email message instead of sending the message to the distribution group, the message is delivered to and received by the user.

Additionally, if you run a command such as the following to return a list of recipients in the dynamic distribution group, the user doesn't appear in the list:

$list = Get-DynamicDistributionGroup sales@contoso.com  
Get-Recipient -RecipientPreviewFilter $list.RecipientFilter -OrganizationalUnit $list.RecipientContainer

Cause

This problem occurs if the dynamic distribution group was set up before the environment became a hybrid deployment and if the dynamic distribution group uses filters to include only mailboxes. Mailboxes that are migrated to Microsoft 365 become mail-enabled users in the on-premises directory.

Resolution

Use the Set-DynamicDistributionGroup cmdlet to update the filters for the dynamic distribution group to include mail-enabled users. For example, run the following command:

Set-DynamicDistributionGroup -Identity sales@contoso.com -RecipientFilter {(RecipientType -eq 'UserMailbox') -or (RecipientType -eq 'MailUser') -or (RecipientType -eq 'MailContact')}

Important

When you add filters to an existing dynamic distribution, be sure to include the existing recipient filters. Why? The Set-DynamicDistributionGroup cmdlet replaces the existing recipient filters with the value that you specify. Also, you don't need to specify the default recipient filters. Exchange will add these filters automatically.

More information

For more information, see Get-DynamicDistributionGroup and Set-DynamicDistributionGroup.

Still need help? Go to Microsoft Community or the Exchange TechNet Forums.