This question is from a user with a shared mailbox in his profile:
When I send new messages from the shared mailbox, the default address is my own address, not the shared mailbox address and I need to select the shared mailbox as From address. Other accounts default to using their own address. How can I set the shared mailbox account as default 'From address'?
Outlook will use the address assigned to the currently selected mailbox or data file as the default address if it is configured as an account in File, Account Settings. Because a shared account is a secondary account in your profile, Outlook won’t use that address by default when viewing the mailbox.
The only way to get around this is to add the shared mailbox to your profile as a mailbox. There can be issues if you have delegate permissions on the shared mailbox or it’s automapped (eg, is added to your profile automatically), so you or your admin will need remove delegate permissions or disable automapping before you add it to your profile. To avoid these problems, create a new profile for the shared mailbox instead.
If the mailbox is added using the Open Additional mailbox command in Account Settings, remove the mailbox from your profile in File, Account Settings, More Settings, Advanced.
Using the simplified account dialog
Use these steps with the new, "simplified account dialog".
- In File, Account settings, choose Change Profile
- Outlook will close; click on your Outlook shortcut to reopen it.
- Click New
- Enter the shared mailbox email address in the address field. Click Connect
- When the Enter password dialog opens, click the Sign in with another account link
- Enter your email address or signin name. click Next
- Enter your password. Click Sign in
- After the wizard finishes, open Outlook using this profile.
Using older versions of Outlook
Use these steps with older versions of Outlook or with the Manage Profiles option in Outlook 2016 and newer.
- Close Outlook and open Control panel then search for Mail.
- Select your Profile and click Properties to open your profile
- Click Email Accounts
- Click New to add a new account to your profile.
- Type in the email address of the shared mailbox and anything for the password.
- After autodiscover finds the account, the password dialog will come up.
- After the wizard finishes, reopen Outlook.
Outlook will now treat it like any other folder. When you send new mail while viewing the folder, Outlook will send it from the account.
Create a Profile for a Shared Mail Video Tutorial
This video shows how to create a new profile for a shared mailbox using the method for older versions of Outlook. With the exception of creating a new profile, the steps are the same to add the account to an existing profile (if the shared mailbox is not automapped).
You must have FullAccess permissions on the account for this to work.
If you are unable to use a new profile, one of the following tools can be used to set the correct reply address automatically.
Tools
Office 365 mailbox may have multiple SMTP addresses and receive mail sent to any of the secondary addresses but Exchange Online always uses the primary SMTP address for sending messages. ChooseFrom 365 application allows Office 365 users to send a message with any of their own SMTP addresses as the From address. New feature: multiple display names associated with a single SMTP address. The application is a cloud service. |
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Exchange transport event sink that allows Exchange users to specify any From address, including the secondary addresses on their mailbox. For Exchange 2007; Exchange 2000/2003 version also available. |
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Exchange server mailboxes can have multiple SMTP addresses and receive mail sent to any of these addresses but Exchange will always use the primary SMTP address for sending messages. ChooseFrom allows users to send a message with any of their SMTP addresses as the From address. |
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ChooseFromOWA for Microsoft Exchange 2007/2010 application allows users to send a message with any of their own SMTP addresses as the From address. |
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Exclaimer Email Alias Manager for Exchange is the simple and robust way to send from multiple email addresses and a single Exchange mailbox. Use the Outlook Add In to select your sending address when composing and for phone or OWA, add a simple tag to the message subject to choose which address to use. Alias Manager is licensed per active user. Site licenses are available and the 30 day free trial lets you test the product for all users. |
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Lucatec Mask Add-in for Outlook is used with Exchange server accounts, allowing replies from a shared mailbox or public folder, automatically entering the folder or mailbox's email address in the From field. Lucatec Mask will automatically determine the correct sender address to use based on the mailbox or public folder the user is currently using in Outlook. It also offers the option to move or copy the sent message to the relevant account's Sent Items folder (or Public Folder). It supports shared Exchange Server accounts and Public Folders with email addresses. Works with Outlook 2000-2010. Version 3 |
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Proxy Manager lets you send emails using any proxy SMTP address from your Exchange account. There are no server components, everything is done on the client side - just install Proxy Manager, and you are ready to go! Select the address to send from and click the Send button. For Outlook 2010 and up. |
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COM add-in for Outlook 2003/2007 that automatically fills in the correct From address when the user is responding to a message in another user's Exchange mailbox. (Use it with the UniSent add-in from the same site. UniSent keeps the outgoing messages in the Sent Items folder of the other users mailbox.) Version 1.7.0.4 |
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SelectSender is a tool for Office 365 users who need to send mail from different addresses. This utility allows an Office 365 OWA user the ability to easily select the From address of the new, replied or forwarded message. SelectSender can be used only in cooperation with ChooseFrom 365 cloud service. |
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Outlook COM add-in that lets you automatically insert in the "From:" or "Have replies sent to:" field any address/alias that you need for each outgoing message. If you're mainly concerned with getting From right when replying to mail from another user's Exchange mailbox, RightFrom, from the same author, would be more appropriate. |
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This utility allows an Outlook user the ability to easily select the From address of the new, replied or forwarded message. The message can be replied with the same From address as original message has been sent to. You can also set a different signature for each e-mail address. |
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SmartReply 2010 is a utility for Exchange Server users who need to send email using different addresses. This utility provides an Outlook user with the ability to easily select the From address of the new, replied or forwarded message. The message can be replied with the same From address as original message has been sent to. Also you can set a different signature for each e-mail address. Supports Office 365 Exchange Online. |
too much work. just add your AD account in the "Send As" delegation for the mailbox.
To use the method on this page, you need to have send as permission on the mailbox already, as your account will be logging into the mailbox. You would use this method if you need to send a mail merge from the shared mailbox or are sending from another application (such as quickbooks) or need to have the shared account set as default account.
Thank you, thank you!!!!
I moved from G-Mail Suite to Office 365 and the shared Mailbox Auto-Map was just painful.
I also had a MS Access 2016 Application that needed to send emails as the shared mailbox (previously with G-Mail it was not).
After reading your article the lights went on :)
I also found how to remove the Auto-Map using this article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2646504/how-to-remove-automapping-for-a-shared-mailbox-in-office-365
Now everything is working perfectly. It seems that Outlook is more stable now as well.
I seem to be having the opposite problem of the rest of the internet. every time a user replies to an email from a newly created shared mailbox it attempts to reply as the shared mailbox, not as them - and they don't have permission to do that (nor do I want them to).
We plan to use this mailbox as a issue alert system. Everyone will have it and we can have conversational views to keep updates in order and in a single place. But I need to know who is adding their two cents when they reply, and currently the users will have to manually choose themselves, as the shared mailbox is the default reply address.
We have Exchange 2010, with Outlook 2013 and the users have only their own mail profile with the shared mailbox being added as "Additional Mailboxes" in their account settings.
What permissions do they have to the account? Replies will typically be from the receiving account if the person has full access and send as permission
Hello Diane,
Is-it possible to script the adding of shared mailbox as a mailbox? the purpose is to deploye this option for a large of users. Thanks a lot for your help and I wish you a very new year 2017.
If the shared mailbox is enabled for automapping, it will be added to the users profile automatically. If you need it added as a separate profile, you might be able to using the office customization tool.
We have disabled the automapping and create a shared mailbox for each our 1200 users. The purpose is to add every shared mailbox created as an additional mailbox in the same profile of user. How we can do that automatically for 1200 users and avoid to passing on each workstation? your help will be appreciate
AFAIK, you can't, especially with Outlook 2016. Outlook 2013 still uses PRF files to automate profile configuration. Otherwise you are limited to whatever is supported in the OCT, and i believe it's pretty much nothing (it's been a while since i used it.)
Hello Diane,
Adding the shared mailbox to the profile as a mailbox is a good solution but is there a way to do that by script or any automatically way as I must do that for over 1500 users :( .
Thank's Diane for your help. It's much appreciate.
The only way would be if the OCT supports adding additional accounts, or if you use an older version that supports a PRF... but unless each user opens the same mailbox, this will require creating a custom prf for each user (they are editabled in notepad... but not supported in 2016)
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179097.aspx has information about the tool.
Hi I've done this same thing we are on office 365 and I've set up a shared mailbox that way, it works fine when its done but then after a few restarts of the computer and outlook its falling over and messages you send stay in outbox and says outlook data file cannot be accessed.
Did it where you add an additional account on to an existing one as the other way is not really a good option for us.
If you are adding it as an email account you need to make sure automapping is not enabled (if the account shows up in the profile automatically after adding your own account, it's automapped). It should also not be added as a additional account in Account Settings > double click on your account then More Settings. The account should only be added to the profile once. You also need send as permission on the shared mailbox.
The benefits of adding it as an account instead of a shared mailbox (using either automapping or the additional mailbox dialog):
Adding it as a second email account in the account list will create a separate cached data file for the shared account.
Signatures & Rules work
New messages will use the Shared account - you don't need to add the address to the from field.
Hi,
Thanks for the valuable writeup. For our small-business office setup, as part of office365 mail setup (Small Business Premium), we were badly looking for a solution and came across this page that met our requirements and solved one of our major setup issues. (May be solution is existing in Microsoft pages that we could not find out).
Many Thanks.
Is there any way to set the default Reply To email programmatically? I have an application where I send Word docs using the Envelope object, which has only a small set of properties, not including SentOnBehalfOf. These documents need a different Reply To email. If I could programmatically change the default Reply To email, send the document, then set it back to the usual value, that would work.
To set the reply to, use this in the code:
Item.ReplyRecipients.Add "alias@example.com"
Item.ReplyRecipients.ResolveAll
If you wanted to use an itemsend macro, you'd use this - but it would apply to all mail unless you added an if statement to filter it.
Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Item.ReplyRecipients.Add "alias@example.com"
Item.ReplyRecipients.ResolveAll
End Sub
This is the Item property of the Envelope object in an emailed Word document -- not a regular Outlook Mailitem. It only has a few properties. Just To, CC, BCC, Subject and Visible, as far as know. I tried SendOnBehalfOf and a few other likely candidates, and they all errored out. Here is the code segment (running from Access):
'Make Envelope pane visible
pappWord.ActiveWindow.EnvelopeVisible = True
doc.MailEnvelope.Introduction = _
"Customer Project Reminder"
Set itm = doc.MailEnvelope.Item
itm.To = rst![Email]
itm.Subject = rst![Subject]
I tried the ReplyRecipients property just in case, and got an Invalid procedure call or argument error.
i don't have a database set up or the full code, so i can't test it fully (plus i'm on vacation :)), but this code works in word & sets the reply to address- it *should* work from Access too as long as the other fields work. Are you getting the reply to from a field? I wonder if it's not resolving?
Sub TestMacro()
ActiveWindow.EnvelopeVisible = True
ActiveDocument.MailEnvelope.Introduction = "Customer Project Reminder"
Set Itm = ActiveDocument.MailEnvelope.Item
Itm.To = "alias@domain.om"
Itm.Subject = "Test"
Itm.ReplyRecipients.Add "alias@example.com"
Itm.ReplyRecipients.ResolveAll
End Sub
I tried this both with a hard-coded reply address and one picked up from a custom database property (that is what I am using). There were no errors, but the email did not have the right address in the From field (just my email address).
Then I tried SentOnBehalfOfName, and that worked! (It didn't work yesterday, so it might not be too reliable.)
Here is the modified code segment:
'Set envelope properties of open Word doc
pappWord.ActiveWindow.EnvelopeVisible = True
doc.MailEnvelope.Introduction = _
"Customer Project Confirmation"
Set itm = doc.MailEnvelope.Item
itm.To = strToEMail
itm.BCC = GetProperty("FromEMail", "")
'itm.ReplyRecipients.Add "hfeddema@hvc.rr.com"
'itm.ReplyRecipients.Add GetProperty("FromEMail", "")
'itm.ReplyRecipients.ResolveAll
itm.SentOnBehalfOfName = GetProperty("FromEMail", "")
itm.Subject = strMessageSubject
I will keep testing to see if SentOnBehalfOfName is reliable.
So you wanted the sender address changed, not the reply to address? Sorry for misunderstanding.
SendonBehalfof is reliable, although it can depend on the account type - if using exchange, you need the correct permission on the address. if you display the address, do so after you set the From address.
Actually, I was just trying anything that would get the recipient's replies to go to a certain address. I think the original problem was that I used SentOnBehalfOf (no errors, but it didn't work). Then I looked it up in the Object Browser (should have done that first) and changed it to SentOnBehalfOfName, and that did work! Thanks for your help.
The Microsoft documentation on the EnvelopeItem (such as it is) is skimpy and inaccurate. It is a good thing we have Slipstick to turn to for sound advice.
Hi all!
I have Exchange 2016 standard and clients with Outlook 2010 - 2013
Have the same problem. Need to insert programmatically "travma1@domain.com" into field "Reply-to".
But i so far away from "coding".
Which code and where i have to insert to permanently send emails from PC with mailbox "user1@domain.com" which is a member of shared mailbox "travma1@domain.com".
you use the ReplyRecipients field in add recipients code.
item.ReplyRecipients.Add "alias@domain.com"