Outbox issue

Microsoft

Hello Experts,

 

My team works on a shared mailbox on outlook 2016. I recently created a rule to defer delivery of emails by 10 mins. Every email that i send now is stuck in outbox for 10 mins which is what we wanted, however, the emails appear only in my outbox. My colleague's outbox does not reflect the emails sitting in my outbox. Anyone has any idea why so??? I thought outbox is pretty much designed to work like inbox. Any emails hitting inbox can be accessed from multiple devices or users, if its a shared mailbox. 

 

Is there a solution for this???? is it possible that outbox can sync on multiple devices?? Does emails sitting in my outbox can be accessed by my colleagues?? Any assistance on the above issue will be highly helpful.

 

Thank You!

16 Replies

@ash_ok Hello, well there are a few settings you can check and see if it's applicable. I assume that you've set it up so it's possible to see a copy of emails in the sent items folder in the shared mailbox? This can be done either with registry configuration (older config), PowerShell or within the portal. As for your particular question the Outbox folder is visible in the Outlook client only. If using a very old browser you would probably end up in "light mode" which for some reason (if I recall this correct) did show the Outbox folder. Anyway, I know it should work as I have access to a shared mailbox and I can see items both in the Draft and Outbox folder from my colleagues. The first thing I would check in your case is the permissions on the shared mailbox, such as Full Access. For info we're using Office 365 ProPlus, different versions, and in cached mode.

Hello @ChristianBergstrom,

 

I highly appreciate your response since you are the first and only person to respond since i raised the same query on multiple Outlook forums. I am not a technical person so i might eat your head up with the questions, so please forgive me in advance. 

 

You quoted "I assume that you've set it up so it's possible to see a copy of emails in the sent items folder in the shared mailbox?" - Yes, my whole team can see the email once it is transferred from outbox (to sent after 10 mins due to the rule), sent items will not have a copy unless it it transferred from outbox. My issue is related to emails still seating in outbox. Pardon me if i misunderstood your question. 

 

Well the shared mailbox was created by my client and my team uses only to manage the day to day activity. So, i am totally unequipped to answer the permission question. 

 

I have personally tested many times but my colleagues can't see the emails in outbox sent by me (for whole 10 mins). Let me know if you could help me in any manner. 

 

PS: We still use offline outlook and not the web version office 365. 

 

@ash_ok Hello again, I noticed you marked your own response as 'best response' and it makes me wonder if you don't want additional replies?

 

I will reply anyway. I'm quite certain it is related to the permissions now as you pointed out that you're not managing them. As I said, I can reproduce your scenario and get it to work as expected but we're all owners of the shared mailbox, part of the same org. and with Full Access permission to it.

 

The reason I asked about 'sent items' was to get a better understanding. Not my intention to confuse.

 

My suggestion is to reach out to the admin who has set it up for you as he/she can assist with permissions.

 

I hope you get it sorted and have a nice day!

@ChristianBergstrom Hello, well i really don't know when i marked my response as best, i guess it happened by mistake. Thank you for pointing out the permission thing, i will definitely check with the admin how to get this stuff sorted. Thanks again for all the efforts. You too have a good day.

 

Hi @ash_ok,

 

as far as I know each email you sending as a shared mailbox in fact is sending by your own mailbox.

It means that the fact you are see a delayed message in your own Outbox folder is normal.

Could you please explain why do you need the delayed message has to be visible for others before real sending?

 

 

@Victor Ivanidze Hello Victor, I could reproduce the behavior (as mentioned) viewing colleagues objects in the outbox folder in a shared mailbox using the Outlook client. As for the way of working it doesn't really matter :)

Hi @ChristianBergstrom,

 

my tests show the follwing:

 

1. I created a new message and populate the From: field with the shared mailbox address

2. I set "delay delivery" to send the message 5 min later

3. I click Send

4. Now the message is in the Outbox of my own (not a shared) mailbox.

 

Could you please reproduce these steps?

@Victor Ivanidze Hello again Victor, I had to ask my colleague and he didn't set a delay on them, just moved items there, and I was able to see them (in the shared mailbox outbox). So I did what I should have done from the beginning. Try it myself, which made it clear that when using 'delay' it's stuck in your own outbox as you pointed out. In other words, I apologize for any inconvenience to you and @ash_ok and will be more precise from now on. Thanks for the heads up!

Hi @ChristianBergstrom - you're welcome. I've just tried to understand if we are talking about the same things ;)

@Victor Ivanidze Hello Victor, My team (6 members) works on a shared mailbox. Now, this mailbox was created by my client and we use it for our day to day activity. Our work involves dealing with data and documents (confidential nature). Now, my team is responsible for replying to the emails received in shared mailbox. As the emails (to respond) are huge in numbers, we sometime end up sending incorrect emails. For example: sending incorrect attachment, sending to incorrect recipient, sending emails without removing confidential data in e-trail. Now, if any of the above occurs it leads to security and data breach. 

 

To avoid the above, i set this defer deliver rule (only for emails with attachment to avoid security incident) which is working totally fine, but the emails stuck in the outbox is not visible to all users of that shared mailbox. My idea was to appoint a person who would perform quality check of all the emails (with attachment) stuck in the outbox sent by the team. Unfortunately, as outbox is not syncing this quality check thing is not possible since that person's outbox will not show the emails.

This is the reason why i want outbox to sync and reflect the emails (in outbox) to all the users.

 

PS: My team is using  Outlook 2016.

Hi @ash_ok,

could you please explain if this person who performs quality check has to see each other user's Outbox?

And now s(he) see some users' Outboxes but not other ones?

 

@Victor Ivanidze I'll respond inline:

could you please explain if this person who performs quality check has to see each other user's Outbox?

Well, currently they have to exchange PC. For example, if i send the email, it will be stuck in my outbox but that email will not appear in other users outbox. The email sits in the outbox (for few minutes due to rule) of the sender, however, others users are not able to see that particular email their Outbox.  

 

And now s(he) see some users' Outboxes but not other ones? No, the email appears only in the sender's outbox. Other team members are not able to see that email in their outbox.  

Hi again @ash_ok,

 

try not to use a shared mailbox but create a regular user mailbox common@yourdomain.com and add it as a secondary account to the Outlook profile of each user  who needs to send as common@.

Hi @ash_ok, have you had a chance to test? 

Hello @Victor Ivanidze Thank you for the suggestion! I did not have an opportunity to try creating a regular user mailbox due to some work commitments. I will definitely give it a shot this weekend. And reach out to you if i face any difficulty while doing so:smile: