I work a lot with customers who are migrating from non-Microsoft mail platforms to Microsoft based ones, be that Exchange Online in Office 365 or on-prem. One of the interesting differences that comes up a lot for customers migrating is the difference between Exchange/Outlook and Domino/Notes and how shared mailboxes are handled. It’s a learning curve and big change for many companies that use shared mailboxes for customer service, sales inquiries, and other purposes, and interestingly enough, the default way that Domino/Notes handles sent and deleted items actually seems to be the more intuitive choice when compared to how Exchange/Outlook handles them.
When you have a shared mailbox that multiple people must be able to use, responding to messages, sorting and deleting, etc. you want all users to have a consistent view of what is happening. Everyone can see the inbox, and if messages are files in to other folders in the shared mailbox, everyone can see those too. But by default, if a user sends an email from a shared mailbox, in the Microsoft world, that sent message goes in the user’s Sent Items, even though it was sent from the shared mailbox. The same thing happens when that user deletes a message from a shared mailbox, the deleted message goes into the user’s Deleted Items.
Customers moving from other platforms are used to a different experience. Everything that happens in a shared mailbox, stays in a shared mailbox. Being such a Microsoft fan, it’s tough for me to say this out loud, but that actually makes more sense. Customers frequently ask for a way to get that same experience with Exchange and Outlook, so I wanted to explain how to do this in today’s post.
Let’s start with a couple of assumptions. First, all users have Full Access permissions to the shared mailbox. They also have been granted Send As permissions. When they send a message, they are choosing in Outlook the shared mailbox as the From mailbox. Finally, no matter which version of Outlook they are using, they are running in Cached Mode. This won’t work otherwise.
To have email sent from a shared mailbox be stored in the shared mailbox’s Sent Items, you can either set up a GPO, or use another method to set the following registry key/value on each client. Sorry, there is no way to do this on the Exchange server or mailbox.
Outlook 2007
1. Launch regedit.
2. Browse to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences
3. Create a new DWORD named DelegateSentItemsStyle.
4. Set the value to 1.
Outlook 2010
1. Launch regedit.
2. Browse to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Preferences
3. Create a new DWORD named DelegateSentItemsStyle.
4. Set the value to 1.
Outlook 2013
1. Launch regedit.
2. Browse to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Preferences
3. Create a new DWORD named DelegateSentItemsStyle.
4. Set the value to 1.
No matter which version of Outlook you are using, restart it after making this registry change.
Once you have done this, whenever a user sends an email from a shared mailbox, it will be stored in the Sent Items folder of the shared mailbox, so that others can see what was sent. It’s a subtle difference to those who don’t use shared mailboxes, but it is a very big deal to those who do. Even if you are not moving from another platform, these tips may be useful for business units who leverage shared mailboxes. Keep them handy in case you need.
Troubleshooting Shared Mailboxes and Sent Items
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