Question : Global distribution list requires email address

When creating a global distribution list in exchange 2003 an email address is required.  When creating the same list Outlook 2003 this is not the case.  For example I create a distribution list in Outlook call My distributionlist and all users receive the email from my distributionlist.  On the other hand, if i create the same list on the exchange server when users receive the email it will display mydistributionlist@domain.com.  Why is the behavior in outlook different from that exchange.  I would like to create a distribution list in exchange to behave the same way it does in Outlook without @domain.com.

Answer : Global distribution list requires email address

The underlying functionality between the two is very different so you really can't compare them. In Outlook a Personal Distribution list is mearly a grouping of your contacts that have email addresses. Your group does not have an email address because you aren't mailing to the group as a unit, you're mailing the people you have grouped together. In the behind the scenes process, Outlook does the parsing or "Expansion" of the message to the individuals who are members of the Personal Dist group at the time of Send. The end result is the message arrives addressed to all the individuals and did not retain the name of your Personal Group. This would be bad if you named the group something that could be offensive to others.

By contrast, when sending to a Global Distribution Group, Outlook does not expand the group to it's individual members upon sending. Outlook only has to deal with 1 e-mail address which is that of the Global Dist group in AD. Then, to deliver the single message to individuals which could be on different internal servers or even external domains, a Global Catalog parses or "Expands" the DG to it's members for the fan-out and delivery but the Group name remains intact and not parsed on delivery of the message so the user knows they got the message as a member of the group. This is why an AD based Dist group requires it's own e-mail address.