Hey everyone! We've transitioned to using Exchange Online (EXO) while still having an on-premise client setup. In the past, when we had Exchange 2019, we could easily grant access to users' mailboxes and open them through Outlook for HR and security investigations with our admin privileges. However, after moving to EXO, it seems like we can't open any user mailboxes in Outlook, even with full admin access. Microsoft suggested using OWA instead, but our HR team prefers sticking with Outlook. Has anyone found a way to access EXO mailboxes directly in Outlook? Thanks for your help!
3 Answers
What version of Outlook are you using? Most versions should allow you to see shared mailboxes. The new Outlook may restrict it to automapping only. You could also consider using Purview for targeted discovery searches, which might help with your investigations.
There haven’t been any changes regarding mailbox access. It's essentially the same process whether you're using EXO or EX2019. Just assign the necessary permissions and you should be able to open it.
From what I understand, if you delegate permissions for a mailbox, it usually gets added automatically to Outlook after a few hours—unless you've set AutoMapping to false via PowerShell. Are you trying to access it as a shared mailbox?
Actually, we need to open the mailbox directly as the user, not as a shared or secondary mailbox. We're looking to create a new Outlook profile specifically for the user's mailbox.
We're on the Office 365 suite. It's not about shared access—we're trying to open the mailbox directly in a new Outlook profile. Purview has been used for some tracking, but we need to test connectivity by accessing the mailbox in Outlook.