How to Export Office 365 Group Members to CSV – Process Simplified

This article aims to save you from the complicated process of writing down the name of every group member in the organisation. At the end of this article, you will be able to export Office 365 group members to a CSV file and complete this process in very little time so that your productivity does not get affected. Exporting group members to CSV that need to maintain a list of the users that belong to a specific group. By doing this, organisations can store and manage data more efficiently.

What are the Group Types in Office 365?

There are several group types in Office 365, and our aim is to export every member of every group types available into a CSV file. The group types are listed below: 

• Microsoft 365 Groups

This allows team members to collaborate with each other by providing them with a group email and workspace that is shared with all the teammates to enhance the conversations, schedules, and files. These can be used for collaboration both inside and outside the organisation. Members get a group email and a shared workspace for conversations, sharing of files, planners, and calendar events. Adding of members outside the organisation can be done as long as it is enabled by the administrator.

• Distribution List Groups

 This group type helps users by creating a single email address for a group of people so that they can collaborate better. These are used to send notifications to a group of people and can only receive external emails if it is enabled by the admin. This is best for the situation where you need to broadcast information to several users at once.

• Mail-Enabled Security Groups

This group type sends messages to every group member of a group and allows them to access resources such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and roles of the admin. These groups function the same as security groups. The only difference is that they cannot be dynamically managed through Microsoft Entra ID. They cannot contain devices. They have the ability to send mails to all the members in a group. 

• Dynamic Distribution List

These are mail enabled groups that sends mails to users with specific attributes such as location, or a department. They are defined in the exchange admin center and not the Microsoft Entra ID. the member list is calculated every time a message is sent out based on conditions and filters that have been predetermined by the admin. 

• Security Groups

These are used to get access to Office 365 resources. These groups makes the administration of resources much simpler as you only need to administer the group once instead of adding individuals to each resource. Security groups allow members or devices to be automatically added or removed based on several attributes such as location, title, and department. These groups can also be added to a team. 

• Shared Mailboxes

These are put to use when several people need to access the same mailbox for reasons such as getting company information, support email address, or other information that is shared with a large number of people. Shared emails also includes a calendar for collaboration among users. Users that have permissions can send or send on behalf of the entire group. 

How to find Microsoft 365 Groups?

In order to find the groups in Microsoft 365, follow the steps given below: 

1. First, sign in to the Microsoft Exchange Admin Center. 
2. Click on the Recipients option.
3. Go to the groups tab.
4. Click on the Group type option to go to the list of the groups. 

How to Export Office 365 Group Members to CSV Using PowerShell?

Using PowerShell scripts are one of the best ways you can use to export Office 365 group members. You can use PowerShell to collect Microsoft 365 group information and then access the list of all the groups. This allows you to get the information of the groups easily. Follow the steps given below to export Office 365 group members to CSV using PowerShell. 

• Connect to the Exchange Online PowerShell. 
• Use the command given below to list all the groups in Office 365.

• After the listing of groups is complete, use the commands given below to select the members in a single Office 365 group. 

• In case you want to list all the members of every Office 365 group, then you will have to follow the command given below. 

• Once you have all the information you need related to every Office 365 group, you can use the command given below to export these Office 365 groups to the required CSV file. 

• After using the script, you will get the list of Office 365 group members in the csv format. 

Export Office 365 Group Members using the Office 365 Admin Center

Here are the steps you can use to export Office 365 distribution group to CSV: 

1. Log in to Office 365 Admin Center. 
2. Go to Teams and Groups option.
3. Choose Active teams and groups.
4. Go to the Distribution list option. 
5. Choose “Export groups in this list” option. 

Doing this will export a CSV file with attributes of a distribution lists such as Name, Alias, Group ID, Primary SMTP address, and much more. This file will be in the downloads folder and will contain all the details of the distribution group. 

How to Export Office 365 Group Members to CSV using Outlook?

You can export members to a CSV file with the help of Outlook and Microsoft Excel. Here are the steps you need to follow: 

1. Open Outlook and draft a new message. 
2. Enter the name in the “To” field. Click on the “Check Names” option to verify all the names in the distribution list. 
3. Choose the “Plus” button and copy all the users in the “To” list. 
4. Now, you need to open Microsoft Excel. Click on the paste button in the top toolbar, and from the dropdown, choose “Use text import wizard”
5. Select Delimited option and then click on Next. 
6. Set the Delimiter as a “Semicolon”. This will paste every member’s name and email address in all the columns. 
7. Select all the columns and copy the data and paste it in a new sheet. 
8. Now select the paste special option from the dropdown in the paste option. 
9. Now you can save this sheet as a CSV file by going to File > Save as > CSV. 

Conclusion

At times, users want to export Office 365 Group Members to CSV to fulfill business requirements. In this article, you have learnt the ways you can export group members to a CSV file using PowerShell, Office 365 admin center, and Outlook. These methods will prove to be beneficial to you and improve your productivity. Without using one of these methods, you will have to manually write down the name of every group member which will be very time consuming and complex.