Office 365 Shared Mailbox Not Showing in Outlook – Issue Resolved

Office 365 provides a versatile platform that allows users to manage multiple accounts and mailboxes seamlessly in Microsoft Outlook. These include primary mailboxes, archive mailboxes, and shared mailboxes, each serving distinct purposes.

A shared mailbox ensures that any email sent from it displays the shared address as the sender, maintaining professional consistency. For instance, a support team using a shared mailbox like support@company.com will have all outgoing emails appear from the shared address, regardless of who sent them.

Despite its utility, some users encounter issues where the shared mailbox does not appear in Outlook. This can prevent access to critical emails and disrupt workflows. Such issues may arise due to misconfigured permissions, auto-mapping errors, or synchronization problems.

In this guide, we will discuss simple and effective solutions like Office 365 Email Backup Tool to fix the “Office 365 Shared Mailbox Not Showing in Outlook” problem, ensuring uninterrupted access to shared mailboxes and their features.

Why is my shared mailbox not appearing in Outlook 365?

• The user is unable to see the shared mailbox in Outlook after you have moved the on-premises mailboxes to Office 365, and that time it was not connected to the shared mailbox that has been shared with you.
• In some cases, the user may encounter an error while resembling the shared mailbox – Cannot display the folder. Outlook cannot access the defined file location. The operation failed. An object cannot be found.
• This error also may occur if the access rights are allowed by the administrator through the Dialog Access, which means only default folders like tasks, inbox, calendar, contacts, and notes, etc. are shared. However, it does not imply that the user may involve the shared mailbox in his/her Outlook account.

Fix the Error: ‘The Folder You Selected is Not Available’

Normally, the shared mailbox should come up instantly at the user’s Outlook profile. Though if it is now showing, then the user may get an error message – ‘The folder you selected is not available.’ In such a situation, you can manually add the mailbox to the account. So, follow the steps to do so:

• In MS Outlook, hit the File menu and click Account Settings & then choose Account Settings.

• Now choose the account that includes a shared mailbox. Then click the Change button.

• After that Hit More Settings.

• Now, in the Advanced tab, click the Add button.

• After that enter a new name in the mailbox. Then hit OK and Apply.

After the process gets completed, you can see the Shared mailbox in your Outlook account profile.

Even after manually adding it, if the shared mailbox does not appear in Outlook, then you should work for troubleshooting the Outlook.

Try to Enable the Troubleshooting Logging

• Hit the File option and then choose Options.

• Now navigate to the Advanced tab and check the option Enable Troubleshooting logging.

• After that restart the MS Outlook and go to the temporary folder (%temp%). Now, examine the recent logs which may reveal probable errors associated with the shared mailbox. Next, take necessary action according to the given error.

Try to Disable Automapping

Automapping is a function in Mircosoft Office 365 that automatically maps the shared mailbox to your MS Outlook account. Outlook saves all the data in the OST format. Hence, the data from the shared mailbox extends the data very much, and it can become more than the optimal size of 50 GB. Now if the OST file size increases, then it may start giving difficulties and stop taking data from the shared mailbox. Thus, it is more useful to disable the automapping and add the shared mailbox as a separate profile.

Here is the entire process to disable the automapping.

1. Connect with PowerShell

• Open Windows PowerShell and run the command:

$Credential = Get-Credential

Enter your Office 365 credentials. Enter them and click OK.

• Run the command to connect with Exchange;

$ExchangeSession = “New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri “http://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid” -Credential $credential -Authentication “Basic” -AllowRedirection”

• Import the session:

Import-PSSession $ExchangeSession

2. Remove permission for the shared mailbox.

Run the command:

Remove-MailboxPermission -Identity information@xyz.com -User joe@microsoft.com -AccessRights FullAccess

Doing this will remove the access rights of the information shared mailbox to the user Joe.

3. Delete the shared mailbox.

• Click File then go to Account Settings >> Account Settings.
• Select the account, click the Change option.
• Now hit More Settings >> Advanced tab.
• Select the shared mailbox and click Remove.

4. Reinstate the full access permission.

Run the following command –

Add-Mailbox-Permission -Identity information@abc.com -User joe@abc.com -AccessRights-FullAccess -AutoMapping:$false

Here the AutoMapping parameter will incapacitate the automatic mapping.

5. Add the Shared Mailbox as a new mailbox.

You can easily add the shared mailbox as a common account in MS Outlook and MS Outlook will create a new OST file for it.

Migrate Shared Mailbox from Office 365 to MS Outlook

The above-mentioned workarounds should be able to solve the “Office 365 shared mailbox not showing in outlook” problem. But still, if your Office 365 shared mailboxes are not seeing up in Outlook then, it’s a chance that shared mailbox migration got dropped due to some strange error. In this situation, you can take the help of professional software to export the shared mailbox and import it into your Outlook application.

You can use DRS Office 365 Email Backup Tool, to export the Office 365 shared mailbox to PST and then, import the PST file into the Outlook application. The professional Office 365 migration tool will take care of all the authority levels and migrate all the mailboxes to the desired Outlook accounts efficiently. Follow these steps to migrate shared mailboxes from Office 365 to MS Outlook.

• Download the DRS Office 365 Email Backup Tool from the official website and install it on your system.
• Open the tool and log in with your Office 365 admin credentials.
• Select the “Shared Mailbox” option from the displayed mailbox types.
• The tool will list all available mailboxes. Choose the shared mailbox you want to migrate.
• Select PST as the output format to ensure compatibility with MS Outlook.
• Use advanced filters like date range, folders, or specific items if you need to migrate selective data.
• Click on the Start Backup or Migrate button to initiate the process.

Winding-up

After practicing all these techniques, you should be able to see your shared mailbox content in MS Outlook. However, if you are incapable to see the shared mailbox and still facing the “Outlook 365 shared mailbox not showing in Outlook” issue then it is feasible that the migration of the shared mailbox failed due to some causes. There it is recommended that you should use a professional migration tool that does not have any faults and completes the migration process efficiently.

Also Read: How to Add a Shared Mailbox in New Outlook?