Public folders won't sync to smartphones, but what about site mailboxes? Can they sync?
Site or shared mailboxes don't have their own logon but they can be opened (as the only account) in an Outlook profile using the credentials of anyone who has Full Access permission. Unfortunately, when you use your credentials to set up an Exchange account on a smartphone, it opens your mailbox, not the shared mailbox.
The shared mailbox cannot be hidden from the address list when you are setting up the account. It needs to be visible for this method to work. After the account is configured, the address can be hidden.
However, you can open the shared mailbox using POP3 or IMAP (if those services are enabled for the shared mailbox) using youremail@address\sharedmailboxalias format for the login.
Some servers may require domain\useralias\sharedmailboxalias format.
For example, this configuration works on an iPad/iPhone (and also on Android and Windows Phone) to connect to an Office 365 shared mailbox. This will work with on-prem Exchange provided POP3 or IMAP support is enabled on the shared mail.
Server name: outlook.office365.com
Port: 993
Encryption method: SSL
Server name: smtp.office365.com
Port: 587
Encryption method: TLS
Apple Devices
Enter the Shared mailbox display name and email address and something in the password field on the New Account screen and click Next.
Enter the incoming and outgoing server names, the username in youremail@address\sharedmailboxalias format and your password then click Next. The mailbox is now ready to use.
Android Devices
Screenshots from an Android tablet, showing the server settings for Office365 shared mailboxes are below.
Enter the shared mailbox's display name and SMTP address on the first screen. Type something in the password field. Click Next.
Enter the server name and port settings, the username in youremail@address\sharedmailboxalias format and your password. Click Next.
Enter the outgoing server name or port settings. If needed, use your username and password for Outgoing authentication.
Video Tutorial
This video tutorial shows how to add a shared mailbox to an Android device. The steps are the same on an Apple device; only the actual screens will vary.
Note: if you aren't using Office365 Exchange online, you'll need to use the correct server names, security types, and port settings for your server.
When you configure the account as POP3, messages are downloaded and marked as read on the server. Use IMAP if you want to keep (and sync) the read/unread state.
Jim says
This process has worked for the past two years, but two days ago this has stopped working. The email account works on Office365 or in Outlook on my laptop. I installed Outlook for iOS but was unable to connect to the shared inbox even with Microsoft Technical Support. Are there any changes anyone is aware of?
Webmaster says
They are always changing things but I didn't think anything changed for shared accounts but will check.
Webmaster says
Btw, did you install the iOS update right before it quit working ? The slash is missing from the keyboard in the mail app... I don't know when it disappeared but it could affect the account. (I will try using copy and paste. )
Diane Poremsky says
are you getting any error messages? when i try it, i'm getting a message that logins are disabled for the account.
Jim says
Sorry I missed all these replies. I normally get an error that the username or password are incorrect. I have had this setup as IMAP per the original postings above and it worked great. I did have trouble after the iOS update was installed. I had my IT guy up here this morning making sure all the ports were properly set and I had all the host names and setting correct. At this point it seems like it is timing out and not connecting, but at least I'm not getting the same error.
Diane Poremsky says
My error message this morning was 'logins are disabled' for the address. I had a different error when i added the account but added it anyway... removed the account this morning to repro error and had no problems adding it (darn! foiled again). Noticed the slash is back in the keyboard too.
I used to use my own account to set this up as imap but it has multi-factor auth and the app password is a pita to enter, so i assigned full access permissions to an account that didn't have multi-auth enabled. It's possible that multi-factor accounts won't work with this - I will need to test it more.
Jim says
My error is, "Cannot Get Mail" The user name or password for a@b.c is incorrect.
Diane Poremsky says
Are you using email@address.com\shared format for the user or server\alias\shared?
Is multifactor auth enabled on your mailbox?
Jim says
I am using email@address.com/shared as the username as shown in the original posting above for iOS using IMAP. Also I did set the SMTP user name as email@address.com as emails should come from me and not the shared address...but this would explain why that works. As for multifactor auth, my IT group says it is turned on but not configured.
As for the subfolders being displayed that stopped working when I could no longer connect to the shared email inbox, but I have always been able to see the subfolders as certain emails are directed automatically to certain subfolders as multiple parties share this corporate sales inbox.
Diane Poremsky says
hope this is a typo - /sh - its the other slash (wordpress would remove it if i typed it here).
The missing subfolders are likely just due to not being able to log in. Have you tried removing the account and adding it back?
Jim says
I've tried removing and adding the account several times. I've tried the slash in both directions forward and backwards and I also tried an underscore. No luck. My IT advised to login to my 365 account through safari...it works but I'm not a fan. I only want one mail app
Diane Poremsky says
You need a backslash - the screenshot is the account i setup the other day to test it. I'm not able to send messages from this account though. I'm not able to send mail though.
Jim says
Oh, and I forgot. The best part of this is I can send an email from this shared inbox, but I cannot see the incoming inbox and subfolders.
Diane Poremsky says
>> I cannot see the incoming inbox and subfolders.
Did they all disappear or just stop syncing? It almost sounds like the folders were unsubscribed. But that wouldn't cause the password message and AFAIK, the inbox can't be unsubscribed.
In the account settings on the phone, open the account then click on the smtp server - could it be sending from another smtp?
Curd says
We have multi-factor authentication and I could not get it to work.
Did you test it yet?
Diane Poremsky says
i was able to set my shared mailbox up on my iPhone using my account that has two-factor enabled - i used an app password, not my real password.
Mike says
Thank you for this article. I have attempted your instructions above on and iPad running IOS 10.0.2 and it appears in the setup to have work with confirming check marks. However when I attempt to access the site mailbox i receive the following message "The mail server 'outlook.office365.com' is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info in mail settings.". As stated above when I setup the account it confirmed with check marks on all settings. Do you have any suggestions?
Gareth Nelson says
Thanks for the walkthrough, works great apart from the fact that the users I've set up on iPhone cant view email attachments. The attachment is visible but wont completely download, it gets to like 2/3kb then starts again and repeats this cycle really quickly (few times a second)
I've tried multiple emails from multiple recipients, so its deffenatly not the single email. The attachments work in OWA/outlook, and if I forward the email to my personal email account the attachments open fine.
Any thoughts?
Stever says
I had trouble adding my shared mailboxes to my iPhone. My aliases contained dots such as steves.xyz.alias That didn't work on the iPhone but when I changed the mailbox alias on Exchange Online to steve_xyz_alias it worked perfectly.
Diane Poremsky says
Cool, thanks for letting us know. I'm sure it will help others.
Kamuzz says
Came across this today: slingshare.com
If all they are offering is instructions, then there must be a way to do open shared mailboxes in the Outlook app. Any ideas?
Diane Poremsky says
$3000 and an NDA to "license" instructions? Sounds more like a scam to me. For $48/year, you can licence the mailbox and use a password. :) Or use the OWA app (and add the shared mailbox to your account in OWA). The Outlook app will eventually support shared mailboxes - i believe later this fall or winter.
Stein Haugen says
Wery good article. Worked on the first try. Tnx
Chandan says
Thanks. Gr8
Joe says
Okay, I was successfully able to add a shared mailbox which I have full access to, but now how do I access email from that account? All I see is the email from my own account.
Diane Poremsky says
They should sync down to the phone and be listed under Mailboxes. Are you using Android or Apple?
Joe says
I have an Android. When I open my email app it goes right to my personal email account and shows those folders. I don't see how to change mailboxes, if that's what I need to do.
Diane Poremsky says
See the screenshot at https://screencast.com/t/0dSgWQvI (I'm on the road and can't upload images directly to the comments section using the tablet)
It is using the native android app - click the menu lines on the left by the inbox name then select the account then scroll down past the 'special' folders to see your folders.
Roger says
This article is outdated and should be removed or clearly marked as outdated.
Here are instructions about how to view your shared mailbox using the outlook app on your phone. https://kb.uwm.edu/page.php?id=45428
Diane Poremsky says
Those instruction & screenshots are from the old OWA app, not the Outlook app. While that app is still in the app store, it's deprecated in favor of the Outlook app formerly known as Acompli. Also, my steps work for anyone using the native mail app or any other mail app - it doesn't require the OWA app - and with any exchange server (the owa apps work with office365; the iOS version may work with specific builds of Exchange 2013).
Derek Chung says
The "OWA for Android (Pre-Release)" on google play now can see the shared mailboxes when my own mailbox is opened. However it needs KitKat 4.4 and my older galaxy Note 2 is not supported.
Diane Poremsky says
Thanks for the update. I'll have to check it out. (Sorry about it not working on your device.)
BTW, is that a new app or the old, old OWA app that is no longer supported?
Peter says
Hello,
When testing this solution on an android, im able to see and receive emails in my shared mailbox, but im unable to send emails. After all this time, has anyone found a solution for this problem?
Thanks for the tutorial, at least im able to view emails.
Diane Poremsky says
To the best of my knowledge, the only solution is a licensed mailbox - users would set it on the phones using the mailbox's address and password.
Will says
I just tested this today and we are able to both send and receive emails using the Shared Mailbox account
Clay says
All you need to do is add the send-as permission for the user on that particular shared mailbox.
arnie says
For those that are still trying to get it to work, I have made some progress.
I am working with a Samsung S3.
I am now able to receive emails sent to my shared account set up on the phone.
I am using the Samsung email app, ( I have not yet tried the outlook app)
1. The change I had to make to get the shared emails to come in to the shared inbox, instead if all my personal emails, was:
In the incoming server settings I had add the full email address to the user name.
Email Address myname@mydomain\sharedname
Username myname@mydomain\sharedname@mydomain
A couple things I noticed along the way.
2. another site used a / instead of a in the email address. ...@mydomain/sharedname. It took me a while to notice that.
3. the video smtp server is different than the screen shot. (I am not sure if it makes a difference, they both authenticate.
screen shot - smtp.office365.com
video - smtp.outlook.office365.com
I think, the only thing left, is to be able to send or reply from the phone.
With the above settings, I continue to get "Error occurred on email server. - 501 5.1.7. Invalid Address" I tried tweaking and changing the outgoing server settings. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas will be appreciated. Thanks
James says
I'm on android 5.0 on a Samsung phone and I got it to work WITHOUT appending the shared alias to the username.
email address: sharedbox@company.com
username: myemail@company.com
password: myemail's password.
Appending the sharedbox causes it to fail.
However, I'm running into another problem. I actually have multiple domains with sharebox as a prefix. e.g.
info@companyB.com
info@companyC.com
But this method only allows me to connect to companyB.com's shared mailbox. When I try to set up the access to companyC.com's shared mailbox, even though I'm able to successfully authenticate, the android mail app actually retrieve's companyB.com's shared mailbox once again.
Any ideas anyone?
Diane Poremsky says
They each have their own mailbox and the same alias but different domains? Try using you@address\shared@address as the username so outlook knows which mailbox to get. When it uses just your address it grabs the first mailbox that matches - it might work to use the alias tagged on, but i suspect it's also going to grab the first.
DebAlex says
So very helpful! My IT department didn't have a clue! But you've done it for me :-) THANK YOU!
Andy Elvers says
Unfortunately I cannot get this to work on my iPhone 6 with iOS 9.1. I can add the delegate account but my iPhone is having nothing to do with the shared account. When I add I am selecting Exchange as the account type and the screens do look different to the iOS screen captures above. I would dearly love this to work.
Thanks,
Diane Poremsky says
>> I am selecting Exchange as the account type
you cannot add a shared account as an exchange account, you need to use imap account type (which is email only).
The only way to add it as an exchange account is using it's own username and password.
Graham says
You're quite correct. I was using my address instead of the shared address in the first step. When I use the shared address it works correctly. I had been trying that for a couple of days without success.
Thank you so much for the help.
Diane Poremsky says
You're welcome. :) Thanks for the motivation to finally do the video - I've been meaning to do it for a few weeks but kept putting it off.
Graham says
I'm trying to add a shared mailbox to my Android smartphone. I already have an account set up for me@xyz.com which has delegated authority to access maps@xyz.com and, can do so in Outlook. When I try to add the shared mailbox to my Android phone, using the me@xyz.com login details, I get a message that the account is already in use. I can't get past that message.
I will need to do the same thing on some iPhones so, I could do with knowing how to get past this problem. Looking at your comment above, my phone is a Samsung, perhaps they do have something unique causing the problem?
Diane Poremsky says
I think you are missing a step. You'll set the account up using the shared address but use your address with the shared alias appended to it in the username field. I have a video showing how to do it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGWwiWBo9BY
juay says
The above guide doesn't work on IMAP using Apple Mail but work on POP. Android, iPhone, Outlook 2011 for Mac & Thunderbird work on both IMAP & POP. Can someone confirm my findings that it doesn't work on Apple Mail (IMAP) - various versions?
Diane Poremsky says
It's working for me in the native mail app in Mavericks. On the first screen put the shared mailbox email address and your password. It'll say you need to manually configure, click Next. Here you use email@address\shared-alias as the username to login and your password. On the SMTP page, use just your address and password (assuming you have send as permission). It's basically the same as in the video I added for android, but with different screens.
vipervr says
Try the steps as mentioned in https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/158/t/248951.aspx it works for me (including sending)
Miles says
Diane:
Regarding my previous post (I can't see how to reply to you), They are told there was an error sending the message. The message is unique to the OS the phone is on. There are no error codes. Just "Message could not be delivered". And you are right, the ougoing server is correct.
Users have Send-As Permissions. I've done research online and can't find anything to get a Shared Account to properly work. All the work-arounds won't work for us either since we are migrating from a full Windows User to a Shared-Only Inbox.
For those that may do the work-arounds, this company (I'm a contractor) was going against SOX Compliance with that setup since no one would actually log into the Windows User to change the password properly; it was a security flaw.
Do you mind sharing which mobile device you used to test this out? I'm assuming it was iOS based on the screenshots.
Again, thank you for your help. I've at least given our users the ability to read the email with your instructions. This is so hard on them. Change is hard, and the IT Dept. is always stuck in the middle. Haha!!
Diane Poremsky says
I've used it on all 3 mobile OS's - windows, ios, and android. It was just easier to get the screenshots from my ipad.
I've had clients tell me that Samsung's mail apps work differently but when I looked at the apps on my son's phone, they looked like the ones on my tablet, only smaller. I didn't set up a shared mailbox on his phone, so maybe they really do work differently. They look identical.
Miles says
I am not able to send from the account.
I'm an IT Employee and I was assisting a user with adding Shared Inboxes. I am successfully able to add the account, thank you for that. However, users are NOT able to send from this account. The email will stay attempting to send in the Outbox, but never send. Also, the email DOES NOT sync with the Exchange Server. What I mean by that is the email that goes to the Outbox in an attempt to send does not sync. So you can't view the Outbox on another workstation and see that mail in Outbox. (I'm not too sure if that's a normal action).
The email WILL download, but users are not able to send. You are only able to view the email with this method. I have not attempted to try and make changes, deleting email, etc. to see if that would sync.
Again, thank you for the steps, but this only solves part of the issue. I'm assuming it has something to do with the "Outgoing" server. Is it possible that "smtp.office365.com" is just a default and could be different with other businesses?
Diane Poremsky says
smtp.office365.com should be the right one for all office365 accounts - you can verify it by logging into owa and checking the pop/smtp settings under options.
do they get any error messages? does their account have send as permission on the shared mailbox?
James Ross says
send doesn't work
Diane Poremsky says
What happens when you try? Is the mailbox visible in the GAL?
Simon says
Thank you very much. I have been trying to figure this out without any success for many days. Finally I landed here and now it works !!
1111BoB says
But there is also this...
https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/158/t/248951.aspx
Diane Poremsky says
The IMAP method still works on Windows phones - I have a shared mailbox set up on my phone. I'll check it in outlook - it's possible they are blocking outlook clients from using outlook - that is fairly easy to do using Exchange.
And to prove it's a current screenshot, the second post in the screenshot is here. (The first post is spammy and will be deleted if they post it too often.)
Diane Poremsky says
As an FYI, if the mailbox is hidden from the address list, you won't be able to add it as its own account.
Also, the site admin can disable imap and pop3 support, if they choose.
bdwatt0 says
I can't tell you how long I've been looking for this info! I had everything right up to the \sharedfolder. Thanks for the info; you're a lifesaver!