Learn About Public Groups

Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Microsoft Exchange, Live@edu

A public group in your organization's shared address book functions like an e-mail mailing list. People can send an e-mail message to the address of the public group to distribute the message to all members of the group. You can join existing groups or create your own group under Options > See All Options > Groups. Create and manage your own group using the Public Groups I Own pane. Join or leave existing groups in the shared address book using Public Groups I Belong To.

Public groups can be used for different purposes. Here are some examples:

• A group named coffeeklatsch for people to join if they want to send messages to the group about subjects and experiences related to coffee.
• A group named InsuranceTalk meant only for insurance agents of a specific insurance company for sharing information about their insurance products.

Understanding Different Users in Groups

A public group has the following types of users, depending on their relationship to the group.

Owner   If you created a public group, you're its owner. As an owner, you can delete the group, add or remove members, add or remove owners, specify who can send to the group, and set approval options for messages before they're sent to the group.

Other owners   If you're added as a group owner, you have the same level of control over the group as the group's creator.

Member   If you joined a group from the address book or were added to it as a member, you can send messages to the group and receive all messages sent to the group. You can see its owners, members, moderators, and other group information from the address book by clicking Details for the group.

Moderator   If you're a group owner and you created the group, then you're its moderator by default when you turn on Message Approval for the group. If you were added as an owner but didn't create the group, you can add yourself as a moderator for the group. As a moderator, you can add other moderators, approve or reject messages before they're sent to the group, and decide how to notify message senders when their messages aren't approved.

Senders   You don't have to be a member to send a message to a group. By default, anyone (including people who aren't part of the shared address book) can send a message to a public group.

Creating or Deleting a Group

You can create your own group using the Public Groups I Own pane. To learn more, see Create a Public Group. To delete a group you own, see Delete a Public Group You Own.

Managing Your Group

When you create a group, you select a few quick options and give it a display name, alias, and description. To manage all the group's settings, click Details. To learn about all the settings that are available, see Change Settings for a Public Group You Created.

Here are some of the additional settings you can manage for your group:

• Ownership   By default, you own a group that you create. Because you created the group, you're its primary owner and can't remove yourself as an owner. If you try to, you'll get an error. But you can add other people from your address book as owners, too. As a group owner, you can add and remove members, control who can send messages to the group, control approval for messages sent to the group, and much more. You set these settings in the Ownership section.
• Membership   In this section, you can add members to the group or remove members from the group.
• Membership Approval   Use this section to choose whether people need approval to join or leave the group.
• Delivery Management   You can control who can send messages to your group. Restrict message-sending privileges to the group in the Delivery Management section.
• Message Approval   You can turn on message approval for your group. When you do this, a message sent to your group first goes to your Inbox for approval. You can approve or reject the message from the sender. The sender's message doesn't reach group members until you or another group moderator approves it. You can also add multiple people as moderators for the group. Manage these options in the Message Approval section.

Joining or Leaving a Group

You can join or leave existing groups in your address book using Public Groups I Belong To. To learn more about a group, click Details for the selected group. You can learn more about the group, for example, who owns the group and who are members of the group. You can also join or leave the group in the details dialog box. To learn more, see Join or Leave a Public Group.

Making Inbox Rules Work

If you've set up Inbox rules to act on messages sent to a group that you're a member of, you might want to include an option to stop processing additional rules on these messages. This is useful if you want only one of the rules to act on a message. Rules are processed sequentially, from the top of the list of rules to the bottom. If a message meets the criteria for more than one rule, each rule will act on the message. You can create rules to help organize messages that arrive in your inbox. For more information, see Learn About Inbox Rules.

What if I want to know more?

• Groups (Public)