The most effective solution for sharing Outlook contacts and calendars in a live fashion is Microsoft Exchange Server. For organizations with fewer than 50 workstations, Microsoft Small Business Server which includes Windows Server and Exchange Server.
In addition to the tools listed below, also see:
- Managing Exchange Server Permissions - Tools
- Housekeeping and Message Management Tools - including archive and backup
Shared Address Book | Shared Calendar Folders | Other Sharing | Tips | Limitations | Problems | Tools | More Information
Shared Address Book
For a shared address book that people can update without the intervention of an administrator, you can use the File | New | Folder command in Outlook to create a public folder to hold Contact items and grant permissions as needed. Users can add this folder to their Outlook Address Book by checking a box on the properties for the folder. Users who work out of the office will want to add it to their Favorites folder and set it for offline use.
Sharing Calendar Folders
To share your own calendar with someone else, grant access with Tools | Options | Delegates or with the File | Properties dialog for the Calendar folder. If you don't see the Delegates tab and you do have Exchange Server in the current profile, use Tools | Options | General | Add-in Manager to add the Dlgsetp.ecf add-on.
To set up a conference room or other resource for shared use, see Scheduling Resources for Microsoft Outlook.
Outlook 2002 is the first version of Outlook with a built-in function for viewing a combined calendar for a group of people (in the Calendar folder, Actions | View Group Schedules). Outlook 2003 is the first version that allows you to view multiple calendar folders -- including those for other people or in Public Folders -- in a side-by-side view. See Maintaining a Group Calendar in Outlook for ideas on how to accomplish either of these tasks with third-party tools and other techniques.
Other Sharing
To show the Contacts folder from another user's mailbox in the Outlook Address Book, see Display Other User's Contacts in Address Book.
If you want someone to be able to send as another user, without getting "On Behalf Of" as part of the sender name, or as a public folder you must grant the Send As permission to the actual sender's Windows account using the Exchange Administrator program or Exchange System Manager. The sender then puts the other person's name in the From field on the outgoing message.
If you also want the sent messages to be filed in the Sent Items folder of the other person, you can use the UniSent COM add-in for Outlook 2000 and 2002.
To allow access to a shared folder that isn't one of the folders listed on the File | Open | Other User's Folder dialog, the mailbox owner needs to grant Reviewer permission to the root of the mailbox, as well as appropriate permission on the folder. The user who needs access then goes into Tools | Services (or Tools | E-mail Accounts in Outlook 2002) , brings up the properties for the Exchange Server service, and on the Advanced tab, adds the mailbox. After that, the user will see in the folder list all those folders in the secondary mailbox to which he/she has access and can add any of those folders to the Outlook Bar.
If you've granted delegate access to someone in Outlook, when they access the mailbox with Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2000, they'll be able to gain read-only access to the allowed folders by browsing to the URL (//servername/exchange/username/calendar for example). However, they can't make any changes unless they have Owner permission on the mailbox.
Also see:
- Items that are deleted from a shared mailbox go to the wrong folder in Outlook -- information on the DelegateWastebasketStyle registry value
- How to save items that are sent by a delegate to a manager's Sent Items folder in Outlook
Tips
All Exchange public folders can have e-mail addresses. If you don't see an Add to Personal Address Book button on the folder's properties dialog and it's hidden in the GAL, ask your Exchange administrator. For Exchange Server 2000, use the Exchange System Manager to see or assign an address.
If you don't want conflict notifications to go out when users save changes to the same item, you can change the folder so that the last saved changed always overwrites earlier changes. See XADM How to Disable Public Folder Conflict Message Notification.
Limitations
Automatic journaling can be turned on only for those Contacts in your mailbox folders, not for public folder Contacts.
Any journal item that you create and save with Save and Close is placed in your mailbox Journal folder. To save a journal item to a public folder Journal, you should use the File | Move command, rather than Save and Close, to place the journal item in the public folder. See Creating a Public Journal for Microsoft Outlook for more ideas in this issue.
Reminders do not fire for appointments, tasks, or flagged items in public folders. See Appointment Reminder Paging Script for a sample Exchange Server script for sending appointment reminders as e-mail messages.
Outlook/Exchange provide no locking mechanism for items and documents in public folders. In other words, there's no way for one user to open an item/document for writing, then have others open it with read-only access.
Problems
Mailing a message to a public folder in Exchange 2000 (e.g. subscribing a public folder to a mailing list) causes the item to be stored as IPM.Post, not IPM.Note, which means you can't reply to it. Earlier versions did not exhibit this behavior. Microsoft released a patch for Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003. The patch is included in Exchange 2003 SP1 and should be used instead of other methods. See KB 817809 for links to the file and instructions on how to enable it.
Some public folders can slow down considerably because of views and read/unread tracking.
- Accessing information store folders may become slow in Exchange
If you're writing code in Outlook forms or add-ins, use Find and FindNext instead of Restrict if at all possible, since Exchange caches the Restrict queries.
Mailbox sharing issues:
Other known issues:
- The synchronization status and the online status do not match when you work offline in Outlook 2007 or in Outlook 2003 (Outlook 2003)
- You cannot create a new public folder in Exchange 2000 Server, in Exchange Server 2003, or in Exchange Server 2007
- You Cannot Copy or Move Messages to Public Folders
Tools in the Spotlight
Automatically sync Office 365 Global Address Lists, shared calendars, and Public Folder contacts and calendars, and CRM contacts from Outlook to business smartphones. CiraSync is a secure, Azure-based SaaS platform that is centrally managed, requires no installation, minimal user training, and can scale to thousands of business smartphones. Try the always fee Personal Edition, or a 30-day, 100-user trial for the Enterprise Edition (no credit card/contract needed). |
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Automatically sync Office 365 Global Address Lists from Outlook to business smartphones in minutes. Always synced. Anytime. Anywhere. CiraSync is a secure, Azure-based SaaS platform. Centrally managed, requires no software to install, no user training, and can scale to thousands of business smartphones. Try the always free Personal Edition or a free 30-day, 100-user trial for the Enterprise Edition (no credit card/contract needed). |
Tools
Client-based notification tool for Outlook folders, including Exchange Server public folders. Now supports Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. Freeware. |
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Company Contacts addin gives you access to a powerful shared address book as a replacement for the Microsoft Exchange 'Global Address List'. Company Contacts makes it possible to create additional address books by just saving Outlook contact items and/or vCard files (.vcf) to a sub folder (the name of each folder is the address book name) in a specified file share. Company Contacts lets you automatically import the global address list to a sub folder of your personal Outlook contacts, making them available on iPhone or Android mobile device. |
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Basic functionality is synchronizing user calendars to public calendars and back. New features include: Admin users (managers) can push items to users directly from the group calendar overview and users can not change or remove those from their personal calendar. Team members can push team items to the personal calendar of everyone in their team so these will also display on mobile calendar devices. and more. Users can create new items for other users from the mobile device calendar. |
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View folder permissions and other properties. Export folder properties and permissions to a text file or relational database for analysis. Send customized messages to folder owners. Manage orphaned public folder client permissions. |
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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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Outlook COM add-in for Exchange Server users who need to send mail from a second mailbox. The add-in ensures that messages sent with the second mailbox's From address or deleted from the second mailbox stay in the Sent Items or Deleted Items folder of the second mailbox. |
More Information
- See Using Microsoft Outlook Links for ideas on making it easy to open other users' calendars and other folders.
- Sharing Microsoft Outlook Calendar and Contacts
- Managing Exchange Server Permissions
- Make a mailbox folder available offline (CDOLive)
- Public Folder Update Notification -- sample script to notify a distribution list when new items are posted in a public folder
- Set All Calendars' Permission to Reviewer
Dear Diane,
I was reading the above article as I'm trying to find a solution to slowness experienced on Outlook 2013 and 2010 used within our company when shifting from one new message to the other on public folders. I'm referring in particular to the read/unread sync status.
Do you have any clue on how can this be handled differently? I mean, there'd be a way to force Outlook not to send the read acknowledgement to Exchange (in our case Exchange on line office 365) ?
Funny thing is that Outlook 2007 performance are really far better that the newest versions.
Any idea please? Many thanks in advance.
Are you caching the public folders? (They need to be in favorites to cache them, if caching is turned on.) What version of Exchange do you use?
Thanks, Caching is enabled, for the favorites too. Exchange online (office365).
With caching enabled it should be fairly fast, on par with our own mailbox. I'll check with support.
Many thanks Diane, I'm looking forward to hear from you!
best regards