How to access a shared mailbox in Outlook or Outlook Web App (OWA)

Owned by Sandro Munoz (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 14, 2017
2 min read

If you have been given access to a shared mailbox, you can access the mailbox in Outlook or OWA.

 

On this page:

 

 

 

Step-by-step guide

Accessing a shared mailbox in OWA

  1. Log into OWA as yourself.
  2. In the top right-hand corner, click your name and in the drop-down list select Open another mailbox...



  3. Enter the mailbox name and click OK.

The shared mailbox behaves like any other mailbox and you can set:

  • rules to process messages
  • set up an Out of Office message
  • set up spam filtering.  


Shared mailboxes are limited to 5GB of storage space.  If the mailbox exceeds 5GB it will not be able to send or receive mail.

Accessing a shared mailbox in Outlook

Accessing a shared mailbox in Outlook does not require any configuration.  The mailbox will appear under your mailbox in the Outlook folder list.  You can access all the messages in the mailbox's folders and send mail as the mailbox.

Sending mail as the shared mailbox

Sending mail as the mailbox from Outlook is easy, but does have a few quirks.  Mail sent as the mailbox will be put into your own Sent Items and not the mailbox's.  You will need to manually move sent items into the shared mailbox's sent items if you need to keep them separate from your own sent items.  To send as the mailbox in Outlook, you may need to show the From line, since this option is not enabled by default.

To enable the From line in new messages, click the options tab at the top of a new message window and click From in the show fields area.

Once you have the From line showing, you can select whom messages are sent as.  You can send from any mailbox you have permissions to send as.