I have a Distribution Group in Exchange 2010 that has an Active Directory SMTP Contact as a member. If I open Outlook 2010 and enter the Distribution Group in the "To" field, and right click and Expand the list, this member of the group is displayed with the correct email address. However, if I send an email to this group and check the Exchange logs using Power Shell, email is not sent to this member. What would cause this? Thanks in advance for your responses.

Enter Get-Recipient -Identity <SMTP_Address_Of_Contact> and make sure that it's a mail contact and not just an AD contact.  If it isn't use Enable-MailContact on it.

Thanks Ed. So even though you can make an AD Contact a member of a Distrtibution Group and Outlook can parse their external email address, when Exchange processes email to that group it simply does not send anything and no notification by design?!

 I thought one of the advantages of using an AD Contact rather than setting them up as a mail enabled user was you could have Contacts that don't "use" email and don't require a CAL.

• Edited by ToNH_Admin 17 hours 14 minutes ago

Contacts don't require CALs because they don't have mailboxes and aren't security principals.  They exist just to identify how to route mail.

Got it - thanks.