Shared contacts in Microsoft 365: five ways

“Where do we put the shared contacts?” Microsoft 365 has no single answer to that, but five. Each place has its own place of maintenance, its own recipients and its own limits, and none of them brings the contacts to the phone by itself. This post puts the five ways side by side and shows which fits which contacts.

Why there is no single place

Outlook knows contacts only per mailbox: what sits in a person’s contact folder belongs to that person. Anything several people should see therefore lives either in the directory (global address list, groups, external contacts) or in a shared container (shared mailbox, SharePoint list). Directory and container behave differently, and both are something other than the contact folder the phone syncs. Hence the five ways.

The five ways at a glance

1. Global address list

According to Microsoft, the built-in global address list includes “every mail-enabled object in the organization” (Address lists in Exchange Online, retrieved on 16 October 2026). For colleagues it is the natural place because nobody has to maintain it separately: whoever has an account is in it. More on the page GAL sync.

2. Members of a group

A security group, a Microsoft 365 group or a distribution group knows its members. It works as a source when not everyone should see everyone: the field service for dispatch, the on-call rota for production. More on the page Group sync.

3. Contact folder of a shared mailbox

The classic place for customers and suppliers that a team maintains in Outlook: a mailbox such as contacts@company.com with full access for the team. Every contact looks like any other Outlook contact, with company, phone numbers and address. More on the page Shared mailbox.

4. SharePoint list

A list fits when the contacts need columns an Outlook contact does not have, say trade, region or contract number, or when a team maintains them in SharePoint anyway. More on the page SharePoint list.

5. External contacts

Mail contacts in the Exchange admin centre are, according to Microsoft, “mail-enabled objects that contain information about people who exist outside your organization” (Manage mail contacts in Exchange Online, retrieved on 16 October 2026). They appear in the global address list and can be added to distribution groups. Anyone who already maintains partners and suppliers there already has a source. More on the page External contacts.

Which way for which contacts?

• All colleagues: global address list. Nothing to maintain.
• One team for another team: members of a group, with recipients only where the contacts are needed.
• Customers and suppliers a team maintains in Outlook: shared mailbox.
• Lists with their own columns or maintained in SharePoint: SharePoint list.
• Partners who should also show up when addressing emails: external contacts in the Exchange admin centre.

From the place of maintenance to the phone

All five ways share the same gap: none of them puts a contact into the individual person’s contact folder, and that is the only thing the phone syncs. GALYNSKI knows all five as a source. An address book gets a name, one or more sources and recipients per source; up to ten address books per organisation, say “Colleagues”, “Vendors” and “Customers”. A nightly run writes the contacts into a separate folder in every recipient’s mailbox. What separate address books look like is on the page Multiple address books.

The folder appears by itself in Outlook on the computer and in the Outlook app. The contacts reach the contacts app and caller ID through the Outlook app: on Android with “Sync Contacts”, on the iPhone with “Save Contacts”. No extra app, no MDM profile. More in the guide Company contacts on Android.

What you should know beforehand

• One direction. Maintenance happens at the place of maintenance. If someone changes a distributed contact on the phone, the next run overwrites the change.
• One card per person. If someone is in several sources of the same address book, the first source wins. Between separate address books GALYNSKI shows the overlaps and offers to leave out duplicate contacts.
• Deletion safeguard. If a large part of a source suddenly disappears, GALYNSKI stops the affected address book before a single contact is changed, and reports the reason.
• Data protection. The contacts live in the mailboxes of your tenant; private contacts stay untouched. The DPA and the data protection documentation are public.

Frequently asked questions

Can I combine several ways?

Yes. In GALYNSKI an address book can have several sources, say the global address list and a SharePoint list; every person then gets one card, the first source wins. If the contacts should stay separate, each source gets its own address book.

What about public folders?

Public folders are the sixth place, but only for Outlook on the computer: the Outlook app does not show them, and Microsoft Graph cannot read them. The contacts move once into a shared mailbox or a SharePoint list; how that works is in the post on replacing public folders.

Which way fits suppliers and vendors?

The shared mailbox if the team should maintain them in Outlook. The SharePoint list if the contacts need columns, views and permissions. External contacts if the entries already exist in the Exchange admin centre and should also be found when addressing emails.

Do employees have to set up anything on the phone?

At most once. GALYNSKI writes the contacts into a folder in the mailbox, and Outlook shows it by itself. For the contacts to appear in the contacts app and caller ID as well, switch on “Sync Contacts” (Android) or “Save Contacts” (iPhone) once in the Outlook app; Intune can preset this centrally. After that the contacts of every new address book come along by themselves.

What does the distribution cost?

4 € per user per month, less on the annual plan; counted are the people who receive contacts, not the sources or address books.