How To Manage Address List Distribution (Offline Address Books)

Address Lists can be made available to users offline by allowing them to download 'Offline Address Lists' or OABs. OAB are files containing address lists that can be downloaded to clients in two main ways:

1. Outlook 2007 clients can download OABs by connecting to a web service on the Exchange Server (virtual directory)
2. Outlook 2003 and earlier clients have to download OABs from a system public folder. 

To create an OAB that relys on web based distribution try the following cmdlet:

[PS] New-OfflineAddressBook -Name "Trainers Starting with A OAB" -AddressLists "Trainers Starting with A"

Once the OAB has been created you can define which OAB users should receive. You can do this in two ways:

1. Attach an OAB to a mailbox database

• [PS] Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity "DB1" -OfflineAddressBook "Trainers Starting with A"

     2.  Specify an OAB for particular users

• [PS] Set-Mailbox "Andrew Stevens" -OfflineAddressBook "Trainers Starting with A"