Empty List or Hidden Membership Warning

Applies To:    PoliteMail Desktop      PoliteMail Online     PoliteMail O365


Version:  4.9    5.0    5.1+


How hidden membership of a list is handled depends greatly on whether you are using Microsoft Graph as part of your PoliteMail setup, which is recommended, or are relying only on Exchange Web Services (EWS).

If You're Only Using EWS

In the past, if you were using only EWS and hidden members were detected, you would receive a prompt to switch to Aggregate Measurement, and the entire list would be added to your message as a single "contact" recipient (users on older versions of PoliteMail will still this dialog).  However, Microsoft has changed EWS expansion so that it can no longer tell if a distribution list has hidden members; this means that lists with hidden members will expand and not be marked as incomplete.  In addition, lists with only hidden members will actually return as empty.

EWS cannot see hidden members; if EWS is your only expansion mode, hidden members will not be measured, and no messages will be sent to them.

PoliteMail configurations using Microsoft Graph will expand correctly with no issues.

Empty Lists

Expanded PoliteMail lists that return empty (whether from hidden members or some other reason) are not added as recipients to a message, and a dialog will appear stating this. You can also choose to disable this warning box under Preferences> List Expansion Methods.