STS: How to Invite an Existing Distribution List to Your SharePoint Team Web Site (293830)


The information in this article applies to:

  • SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft
This article was previously published under Q293830

SUMMARY

Because SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft uses Windows NT authentication to validate any browsers in the Web site, and because e-mail distribution lists are typically not security groups in Microsoft Windows NT, using a distribution list as a group in a SharePoint team Web site requires a minor workaround. This article explains how to perform the workaround.

MORE INFORMATION

The following procedure assigns the same role to every member of the distribution list, so you may want to use the SharePoint Team Services Site Administration afterward to modify individual role assignments.

To invite a distribution list and add that list to your SharePoint team Web site, follow these steps:
  1. Browse to your SharePoint team Web site in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
  2. Click Contacts on the Quick Launch bar to go to the Contacts page.
  3. Click Import Contacts to open an Outlook dialog box titled Select Users to Import.
  4. Find the correct distribution list, and then click OK.
  5. If prompted, click OK again to allow Internet Explorer to access the e-mail address in Outlook.
  6. After the contact list is imported, click Export.
  7. When prompted, select Open this file from its current location, and then click OK. This starts Microsoft Excel and opens the distribution list.
  8. When Excel opens and finishes importing the distribution list, select the first row, which contains the column descriptions. On the Edit menu, click Delete to remove the column descriptions.
  9. Select the column that contains the individual e-mail address for each member of the distribution list.

    NOTE: You may want to clean up the list in Excel before you copy the information into the SharePoint team Web site, because any one who is listed in a nested distribution list will be listed twice.
  10. On the Edit menu in Excel, click Copy.
  11. Switch to your SharePoint team Web site in Internet Explorer, and then click Site Settings.
  12. Click Send an invitation.
  13. On the Edit menu in Internet Explorer, click Paste to paste all of the addresses into the address field, and then click Next. SharePoint Team Services resolves all of the addresses to their correct domains and displays them.
  14. Click Next.
  15. Assign a role and type a message.

    NOTE: You cannot assign separate roles to individual members of the distribution list. You can use SharePoint Team Services Site Administration later to modify individual role assignments.
  16. Click Finish.
After following these steps, you can send an invitation to the entire distribution list.

REFERENCES

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

310932 FP2002: Where to Find the SharePoint Team Services Administrator's Guide

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:4/19/2002
Keywords:kbhowto KB293830
©2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.