Forum Discussion
The sudden removal of public folder access in outlook on the web
Microsofttechnonath You can find the announcement here - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/new-improved-contacts-on-outlook-web-app/ba-p/3639773
The way forward is to use Outlook desktop client to access/manage public folders contacts
Why was this change not communicated through the message centre to you customers before you did it ? Why was the blog post not made in the exchange blog which is where I expect to look for changes to Exchange?
- Another Weird thing I noticed with Contacts public folders,
For them to appear in the Outlook Desktop App Contact Tab under "other contacts", it seems to be necessary to add the public folder to favorites on OWA first, otherwise it just appears in the address book and folder tab view but not the Contacts tab.
(OWA, right click on folders, add public folder to favorites) Paypercorn I don't think I am breaking any trade secrets here, but I did have some contact with the outlook team and I believe they are actively trying to look at a way to re-instate it.
- Ran into the same issue, having a shared public folder for contacts that we wanted to be org wide.
Recommendations seem to be moving contact lists to SharePoint, but documentation is very vague on how to properly do that. 1) Gal contacts are not easily editable by everyone in the company and have no way of syncing them from outlook mobile to your phone contacts, you have to manually copy them - no good for contact sharing https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/how-to-sync-microsoft-gal-global-address-list-on/a4cf4ddf-a68c-47b3-914b-a1ab62c7b783#:~:text=For%20adding%20all%20your%20GAL,selected%20%3E%20right%2D%20click%20and%20select
2) Do you use your own product?? - the documentation clearly states "You cannot access shared contacts list for a shared mailbox from Outlook Web App." https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/troubleshoot/calendaring/how-to-share-calendar-and-contacts
why should I open a support ticket to get you to restore a facility that you just took away with no notice or explanation?? I have a day job to do supporting my customers - I understand that you work for Microsoft and should raise this directly yourself - don't put this one on me. It's no wonder no-one wants to rent cloud software when features can get removed with no notice, it just destroys people's trust in the product.P.S. no-one from Microsoft ever interacts on the feedback portal it is a total waste of time.
- Bhalchandra_Atre-MSFTTechnonath, apologies for the delay in response. I can think of following alternatives to share contacts:
1) Create custom Address list, just for contacts (https://learn.microsoft.com/exchange/address-books/address-lists/address-lists)
2) Use shared mailbox and create the contacts under it
If you still must use the public folder contacts in OWA, I suggest to open a support ticket. You can also file a feedback request on the feedback portal (https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback)
Hope this helps. 2 months on and no answers on this, no clarity about what is happening regarding public folder contacts and no explanation of alternative methods of how contacts sharing between users is supposed to work now in outlook on the web.
Please Bhalchandra_Atre-MSFT we need clarity on this matter.
