When trying to create a new distribution group through EMC you may receive the following error message at the end of the wizard:

Error:
Couldn’t find object "UserAccount". Please make sure that it was spelled correctly or specify a different object. Reason: The recipient UserAccount isn’t the expected type.

Exchange Management Shell command attempted:
new-DistributionGroup -Name ‘test’ -Type ‘Distribution’ –OrganizationalUnit ‘OU’ -SamAccountName ‘test’ -Alias ‘test’

The reason for this is that when creating a Distribution Group it tries to add the mailbox of the user creating it as the manager of the Distribution Group and usually the Admin account that creates the Distribution Groups will not be Mailbox enabled.

To get around this you can use the New-DistributionGroup cmdlet with the ManagedBy Parameter:

new-DistributionGroup -Name ‘test‘ -Type ‘Distribution’ –OrganizationalUnit ‘YourDomain/Distribution Groups’ -SamAccountName ‘test’ -Alias ‘test’ –ManagedBy ‘MailboxEnabledAccount’