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Question about contact sharing in the new Outlook
In the new Outlook for Windows, calendar sharing is fully supported, but contact sharing is still not available. This has been a long-standing request from many organizations, yet there is no clear indication that it will be implemented.
My question is:
Is Microsoft planning to add native contact folder sharing to the new Outlook, or is there a strategic reason why this capability is not being included?
If contact sharing is not part of the product roadmap, what is the recommended Microsoft-supported solution for common business scenarios where an executive assistant needs to view, manage, and update an executive's contacts without being granted full mailbox access?
This is a very common requirement in organizations, and currently there does not appear to be an equivalent replacement for the classic Outlook contact-sharing experience.
Thank you.
- Joe_Lurie
Microsoft
onlyamd Native sharing or delegation of a user’s Contacts folder is not currently available in new Outlook for Windows, and we don’t have a public delivery date to share. If an assistant must manage an executive’s personal contacts today, the supported path is to continue using classic Outlook and grant folder-level permissions to the Contacts folder rather than full mailbox access; a shared mailbox or another central directory can be considered when the contacts are organizational rather than personal.
You can track new Outlook availability and migration guidance here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/outlook/get-started/guide-product-availability.
Also, the SMEs on this chat are Windows and Intune. This might be a better place to post an Outlook (or New Outlook) related question: Outlook | Microsoft Community HubTo be candid, this is the part that many customers struggle to understand.
Microsoft is encouraging customers to move to the new Outlook, while at the same time one of the most common enterprise collaboration scenarios, shared and delegated contacts, still has no replacement and no published roadmap.
Continuing to use classic Outlook is a temporary workaround, not a long-term strategy, especially if the long-term direction is to retire the classic client.
What is the recommended migration path for organizations that depend on contact delegation today? If there is no replacement yet, can Microsoft confirm that customers should continue using classic Outlook until a supported alternative becomes available?
- Joe_Lurie
onlyamd I get that. I am still using Classic Outlook because of a couple of features that are not included in New Outlook. The Outlook community that I posted in my first reply is the best place to ask that question, as we wouldn't be able to answer most Outlook-related questions here.
