How to fix Office 365 shared mailbox not showing in MS Outlook

Last updated on October 30th, 2023 at 07:08 am

There are many benefits to Office 365. You can attach multiple accounts to one Outlook platform. And you can have different mailboxes within your Outlook account that you use for different purposes. It can have the primary mailbox, archive mailbox, or shared mailbox. You can create an archive mailbox and a shared mailbox, and then move your primary mailbox’s information to the archive mailbox.

The shared mailboxes represent the common mailbox that users share within their Office 365 accounts. The shared mailbox is used to send an email to other users. You can easily recognize the shared mailbox by its name like contact@xyzdomain, info@xyzdomain, complaint@xyzdomain, share@xyzdomain

If you don’t see your shared mailbox in Office 365, you might be missing important emails. You can fix this problem immediately.

Causes of Office 365 shared mailbox not showing in MS Outlook

• After migrating the mailboxes from on-premises to Office 365, you may not be able to see the shared mailbox in Outlook.
• Sometimes you might see an error when searching for the shared mailbox. Microsoft Outlook can’t access the specified folder location. The object could not be located.
• Your permission level may also be responsible for the error. The Administrator may grant access rights via Dialog Access. This means that Administrators have only shared default folders such as inbox, calendars, contacts, notes, and tasks. The user can send/receive email on behalf of the account. However, the user cannot include the shared mailbox in his/her Outlook account.

Here are some solutions to this problem

Workaround-1

Administrators should grant an additional permission level, ‘Folder Permission’, to users who access the mailbox folder.

1. Administrators should log in to their account and right-click on it. Then, choose Folder Permissions.

2. Click the Add button.

3. Select the Permission level, and then check the box ‘Folder Visible’ under the other category.

4. Click OK and then Apply.

After the Administrator has granted the permissions, the receiver is able to add the folder to his/her Outlook account.

1. Follow File>>Account Settings>>Account Settings>>Exchange Account>>Change>>More Settings>>Advanced.

2. Click the Add button to enter the name of your shared mailbox address for Office 365.

3. Click Apply to restart Outlook. Verify that the shared mailbox is available now.

If you still have trouble viewing the shared mailbox, you can try the troubleshooting procedure in Outlook.

1. Start Outlook, click File, go to Options, and then click it.

2. Check the Advanced tab to enable troubleshooting logging.

3. Check the logs from the most recent session to see if there are any errors. You can then proceed to troubleshooting the problem based on these errors.

Workaround-2

You can also try a different method, although it is slightly more complicated. Outlook has an auto-mapping function that finds the shared mailbox and adds it into your Outlook account. The Outlook data file grows in size with the data. Outlook may stop accepting data from shared mailboxes once it reaches 50GB.

You can also disable Auto-mapping and add the shared mailbox as a normal mailbox.

Follow these easy steps;

1. Run Windows PowerShell as an administrator on your system (right-click the icon and select Run As Administrator).
2. To connect to Exchange Online, first run the command. $Credential = Get-Credential Enter the Office 365 credentials into the prompt up box.
3. Connect now to Exchange Online $ExchangeSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri “https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid” -Credential $credential -Authentication “Basic” -AllowRedirection
4. Import the Exchange session Import-PSSession $ExchangeSession
5. You can remove the permissions to the shared mailbox. Remove-MailboxPermission -Identity complaint@domainname -User tony@domainname -AccessRights FullAccess
6. You can delete any shared mailbox you have shared after you have removed the permissions. Click the Remove button in Account Settings.
7. You will need to assign full access permission permissions once again. Add-MailboxPermission -Identity complaint@domainname -User tony@xyz.com -AccessRights FullAccess -AutoMapping:$false
8. Finally, you can add the shared mailbox to your normal account and gain access to its data.

Outlook Offline Outlook File Renaming is an option. If this file is corrupted, it could cause Outlook to lose its synchronization. It is a good idea to rename this file, as it contains the Outlook local copy of Exchange and will be recreated when Exchange is connected again.

Navigate to the OST file location – C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Navigate to the.ost file, and add old in the old.pst. The file will be renamed. Start Outlook and examine the changes.

Wrapping up

You should be able to access your shared mailbox using all the methods above. If you still have trouble accessing your shared mailbox in Outlook despite following these steps, you will need to use professional migration software specifically designed for Office 365 migration. Professional Office 365 migration software can manage all permissions and efficiently migrate all mailboxes to the required accounts.