Hide a distribution list from Global address list in Exchange 2010 using Powershell

In this post I will show you how to hide/unhide a distribution group from Global Address List(GAL) using powershell.

Powershell module for Exchange 2010 module has two cmdlets that helps in querying and setting the hide from address list option on distribution groups. They are “Get-DistributionGroup” and “Set-DistributionGroup“. The visibility status of a distribution group decided based on a Property called “HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled”. We can query this property by using Get-DistributionGroup cmdlet. See below for example.

Get-DistributionGroup -Id "mygroup1" | select HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled

The distribution group is configured to be hidden from GAL if the value of HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled is $true. Otherwise it will be visible in GAL.

We can hide a distribution group by setting the value of this parameter to $true. See below for example

Set-DistributionGroup -Id "mygroup1" -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled:$true

Hope this helps