Private Items in a Shared Mailbox (Exchange Online)

[Brent Ellis]

Just run into this for the first time.  Emails marked as Private not showing up in Outlook client (but shows up fine online).  In this case it is a system generated email, investigating whether or not we can turn off private setting.

Seen some online workarounds by converting to user mailbox and changing settings and converting back, etc).  Is there a "correct" way to handle this in Exchange Online so that users can see the emails in Outlook (they are authorized)?

[#2]

What you can do is toggle the "delegate can see my private items" flag via EWS/PowerShell or by configuring the shared mailbox as additional account in Outlook. Then again, if you do add it as additional account you'll be able to see the Private items 🙂

[#3]

Is there a super simple 1 liner that does this for a shared mailbox automatically? 🙂

I've got a script coming together that queries the users of a shared mailbox, then sets the delegation settings for each user individually

But it seems like we'll just have to periodically re-run if membership changes, unless I'm missing something.

[#4]

Nothing is one-liner with EWS 🙂 I've based my scripts on this one, but yes, you will have to update each member's settings: http://www.flobee.net/powershell-module-for-managing-exchange-2010-mailbox-delegates/

I guess you can also (ab)use the new Calendar sharing experience in OWA, when you designate someone as delegate there it will expose the "let delegate view private events" setting.

[#5]

The OWA option for me worked a treat.  "Open another mailbox" in OWA and then open the shared mailbox > go to Calendar > right click on the calendar in the left folder menu and select sharing permissions.  Choose delegate and add the people who are members of the shared mailbox then set them as delegate.

Perfect solution!!

[#6]

@Brent Ellis I know this thread is a bit old, but it does seems that there is a lot of views, So hopefully this helps anyone in the future. 🙂

##############################################################
#MSOnline module must be installed. "install-module msonline"

#1 Connect to MSOnline services
Connect-MsolService

#2 Connect to Exchange Online
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session

#3 Change the email(s)
Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity sharedmailbox@Contoso.com:\Calendar -User John@contoso.com -AccessRights Editor -SharingPermissionFlags Delegate,CanViewPrivateItems

############################################################

[#7]

An alternative way is using a flow that converts each private message to normal one:

SetSensitivity Flow for Office 365

[#8]

Thank you Chris, this helped in a quick resolution.