Microsoft Outlook 2010 supports multiple Exchange server mailboxes. This allows you top open the other mailbox in your profile as another Microsoft Exchange account and once you do this, you will have full access to the contacts folder (along with all of the others folder in the mailbox.)
Delegates should not open their manager’s mailbox as a second mailbox in Outlook 2010. Continue opening it as a secondary mailbox in the profile.
For users who connect to Microsoft Exchange server, maintaining a contacts folder in the Public Folders hierarchy is one way to benefit from a group address book that individual users can contribute to. With some extra effort (see below), the Outlook Address Book can also display contacts from another user’s mailbox, making it easy for an assistant to use the boss’ contacts to address messages.
Display Other User’s Contacts in Address Book | Notes | More Information
Display Other User’s Contacts in Address Book
The process of adding another user’s Contacts folder to your own address book display is somewhat involved:
- Create a new Outlook profile that connects directly with the other user’s mailbox, not your own, then start Outlook with this profile. If you receive a prompt that Outlook cannot open the folders, you may need to ask the Exchange administrator to grant your Windows user account full access to the other user’s mailbox temporarily so that you can complete these steps.
- Right-click the other user’s Contacts folder, choose Properties, then switch to the Outlook Address Book tab. Make sure that the Show this folder as an e-mail Address Book box is checked. Under Name of the address book, change the displayname from Contacts (the default) to a name that will distinguish this address list, such as Joe’s Contacts if you’re in Joe’s mailbox.
- Close Outlook.
- In Control Panel | Mail, bring up the properties for the profile that you created in Step 1. In the Microsoft Exchange Server service, change the main mailbox from the other user’s to your own. On the Advanced tab of the Exchange Server service, add the other user’s mailbox as a secondary mailbox.
- Restart Outlook, using the same profile as in Steps 1 and 4.
After you restart Outlook, when you display the address book, you should see Joe’s Contacts listed in the Outlook Address Book along with your own Contacts folder.
Notes
Any contacts folder that you see in the Outlook Address Book can be used as the data source for a merge with Word. However, in some versions of Outlook, you will receive an error if you start a merge with a contacts folder in Public Folders from within Word. The workaround is to start the merge in Outlook instead, displaying the source contacts folder, then choosing Tools | Mail Merge.
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Last reviewed on Sep 19, 2011
This didn’t work
What version of outlook? I recently verified it still works in outlook 2010.
does this method work with Exchange online? We are using Office365 and have not been able to use our shared contacts as an address book.
It should but I’ll need to double check. I know it works with Outlook 2010 and in-house Exchange and there is really no reason why hosted exchange would be different than local exchange.
I forgot mention we are using Outlook 2007 to connect to Office365. Thanks for the quick reply Diane.
Diane, we are also using Outlook 2007 to connect to Office365. I successfully created the profile connection and connected directly with the other user’s mailbox, but then I could not change it. I cannot change the mailbox in the profile to my name – can’t make any changes at all.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that the process outlined above will work with Office 365, until you close Outlook and try to reopen it. I’m still searching for an answer.
Same result as Scott.
Using Outlook 2010 with Office 365.
Please keep me posted if you find a solution.
Thanks Diane and everyone else who pointed me in the right direction with this. I was able to get this to work with Outlook 2010/Outlook 2007 and Office 365.
At first it failed because I wasn’t following the directions exactly. I was using separate mail profiles for the user mailbox and the “Shared Contacts” mailbox. When I used only a single profile and switched the mailboxes back and forth within the profile it worked.
Before messing with the user profile at all I connected to the “Shared Contacts” mailbox in Outlook. I right clicked the root of the mailbox and opened “Folder Permissions”. In the permissions tab I checked the box for “Folder Visible” for both Default and Anonymous. I also right clicked the Contacts folder and chose “Properties”, and then under the permissions tab I granted Editor permissions to Default and Anonymous.
Then I was able to get this to work by creating a profile for the end user and connecting it to Office 365. I then modified that same profile to connect to the other mailbox with the shared contacts folder. I made the contact folder available as an address book and renamed that address book “Shared Contacts”. Then I closed Outlook and modified that mail profile back to the actual user and added the “Shared Contacts” mailbox as a secondary mailbox. If you don’t add the “Shared Contacts” account as a secondary account it will not be visible as an address book and you will need to start over.
During the process I received a few warnings/errors stating that “Your mailbox has been temporarily moved…”. I just clicked the button to “Use temporary mailbox”. Once it is all set back to the actual user you can do a final close and re-open of Outlook to make sure that warning doesn’t reappear every time you load Outlook. For some users the first time they try to open the contact folder in the folder view, or through the address book interface, they may receive an error. In my environment I was able to close and re-open Outlook and then it worked fine.
I know these directions aren’t perfectly step-by-step, but hopefully it will help someone out.
Just remembered, sometimes when trying to edit a mail profile the control panel wouldn’t let me change the mailbox name. In those cases logging out and back in to Windows allowed me to change the mailbox for an existing mail profile.
Thanks for sharing how you got it to work. I’ll compare your steps and mine and update them so its more clear or add any steps I might have left out.
I got the same error as IAN above ” Your mailbox has been moved…” and I cannot get the message to disappear. It comes up everytime I launch Outlook. Any idea how to resolve this?
I have completed all the steps above to get the Contacts to show up as expected. Now i am prompted everytime I start Outlook with a Message ” Your Mailbox has been moved and i must select “use Temprorary Mailbox or old data” to get into the Mailbox. I also noticed that when I change the account name back to the original user which it accepts with no problem, It’s not changing the Display name nor the Email address of the account user for the profile. I have to go back and change that manually.
Most Solutions I have found say to delete the profile and start over, but that defeats to purpose i think.