You receive a misleading error message when you add a distribution group to public folder permissions

When you try to add client permissions for a public folder for a Microsoft Windows distribution group (not a security group), you receive error messages that may seem misleading.

If you use Exchange System Manager to try to add the client permissions for the distribution group, you receive the following error message: If you use a Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) client such as Microsoft Outlook to try to add the client permissions for the distribution group, you receive the following error message:

This problem occurs because you cannot add a Windows distribution group to the client permissions for a public folder in Exchange 2000. By design, you can only add a security group.

The error messages that are described in the "Symptoms" section of this article may seem misleading; in this situation, you might expect to receive an error message such as:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.

For additional information about these error messages and the relation of these error messages to Windows 2000 running in Native mode, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: "Distribution list" is a synonym for a distribution group in Windows. Distribution list is the terminology that is used in Microsoft Exchange Server 4.x and Microsoft Exchange Server 5.x. Distribution group is the terminology that is used in the Active Directory Users and Computers Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.

For additional information about distribution groups and security groups, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: