How to hide a user or list from Exchange Address books

How to hide a user or list from Exchange Address books

Introduction

Hiding a user or a list from the Address book will result in the user or list will not appear in the Global Address List (GAL). This means that the particular user or list will not appear in services, or search results of the auto-complete functionality or Outlook profile helper, both of which rely on GAL for their search results. This functionality is useful if you have a mailbox that you don't want services to interact with for various reasons. The procedure to hide a user or list from the Exchange Address book is straightforward, and it can be done using the "Hide from Address Book" option.

Hiding a user from Exchange Address book:

To hide a user from the address book, you can perform the following steps:
  1. Go to Start, and click on Exchange Administrative Center.
  2. In the window that pops up, login using the administrator credentials.
  3. Once you have logged in, in the recipients section and under the mailboxes tab, you will find a list of available mailboxes. Double-click on the mailbox that you want to hide.
  4. In the window that pops up, under the general section, check the Hide from address lists checkbox.
  5. Click Save to confirm the action.
The selected mailbox will now be hidden from the GAL.

Checking if the mailbox has been hidden

It's always best to confirm if the process that you performed is successful or not. To check whether the mailbox has been hidden, you can perform the following steps:
  1. Log in to a client machine.
  2. Go to Start and open the Outlook application.
  3. Once the application is open, click New Email.
  4. In the To section, type the name of the mailbox that you have hidden, and then click Check Names.
  5. The dialogue box that pops up should not show any results, and it should display the No suggestions message.

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