Changing distribution group takes a long time in an Exchange Server 2010 environment

When you use Microsoft Outlook to change a distribution group in a multi-tenant Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 environment, Outlook stops responding until you cancel the server request. For Outlook Web App, it also stops responding when you try to change the distribution groups there.

Note The time that this change takes depends on the number of the tenants. The more the tenants, the longer time that it takes. 

This issue occurs because the globalAddressListFromAddressBookPolicy parameter is NULL in the GetGlobalAddressList function, and it causes the function looping through all the address lists to find the closest match. Therefore, Outlook or Outlook Web App stops responding.

To resolve this issue, install Update Rollup 8 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3.

To work around this issue, use the Set-DistributionGroup

(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124955(v=exchg.141).aspx)

 cmdlet to change the distribution group.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

For more information about how to manage distribution groups, see Managing Distribution Groups.