Allow to see private emails in shared mailboxes in outlook (in OWA you can see them)
Short:
On shared mailboxes in office 365 emails that are flagged by the sender as private are hidden. In OWA they are visible.
Long:
Users having full access to the shared mailbox do not see emails sent with a private flag - and they do not get informed about it. The emails are just silently hidden by outlook without any further notice. Quite stupid, for a shared mailbox (e.g. incoming orders!)
We discovered that by coincidence: Our users were concerned because the number of unread emails was increasing - although there were no unread emails visible for them.
If they open the same mailbox in OWA, they can actually SEE the private email!
Improvement:
Get consistent behavior between OWA and Outlook.
Let an administrator configure right to see the private messages on shared mailboxes.
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46 comments
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Victor Ivanidze
commented
You can create a flow in MS PowerAutomate (former MS Flow) that will change sensitivity from "private" to "normal" for each message delivered to the shared mailbox.
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Gavin
commented
One of the things people frequently get mixed up with this request is the difference between calendar and emails.
There is a workaround for the CALENDAR, but not for private emails, other than going to OWA.I don't want to make users a delegate for a shared mailbox in order to view private items. And that sounds like it only works on the calendar anyway, so it is pretty useless.
Senders often mark emails as "private" and send them to general/shared mailboxes because they do not understand what that setting does. My guess is that they are thinking it protects it from hackers somehow or just gives it a label. Since we can't fully educate everyone out there who might try to use it (aside from Microsoft creating an "Are you sure you want to send this as private? The recipient may not be able to view it if you do so if this is going to a shared mailbox."), it would be great to get some kind of resolution to this. I am always a fan of admin control - give us the ability to do what we want!
I have to instruct all my end users that the only way to see them is by going to OWA. But, of course, if they have access to someone's personal mailbox (i.e. as a backup agent), then they can take that knowledge and view the private messages for that person, which is NOT desirable.
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David Cornish
commented
The second part here, having the option to allow the administrator to configure this right either way is important. In some cases, it is helpful to maintain the current behaviour in Outlook, such as when a PA has access to a mailbox, so that they do not read private emails. But consistency is key, as it either presents a frustration in Outlook due lack of visibility, or frustration in OWA where assumed privacy is shown an illusion
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Jan Spallek
commented
I have opened a ticket for this bug and received an official answer from the product group.
They have a bug ticket for this opened.
But as it is difficult to solve and has a working workaround they are currently not considering it to be fixed.
Only if this uservoice entry get more votes it could be considered for fixing -
Julian
commented
It'd be nice for a menu option, but I did have to do this and found a workaround that you can do via Powershell.
##############################################################
#MSOnline module must be installed. "install-module msonline"#1 Connect to MSOnline services
Connect-MsolService#2 Connect to Exchange Online
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session#3 Change the email(s)
Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity sharedmailbox@Contoso.com:\Calendar -User John@contoso.com -AccessRights Editor -SharingPermissionFlags Delegate,CanViewPrivateItems############################################################
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Antonio Silvio
commented
The problem did'nt fix yet :-(
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Adam Gilpin
commented
2 1/2 years later is there still no fix for this?
only nasty fudges that involve logging into each shared mailboxes' calendar manually and adding all delegates with private view enabled.
hopefully there's a powershell option by now but finding those seems about as productive as mining for bitcoin -
Anonymous
commented
Has there been any Microsoft engineering resources looking in to this? This has become an operational issue with internal teams providing support needed to external customers that often send Private emails.
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Jay Gough
commented
This has just reared its head for us as well. I'm surprised that Microsoft still haven't got this sorted after so many posts and votes. O365 support just directed me to this page because apparently they need votes before their engineers will do anything. I dont see why there would be a difference between Outlook and OWA being able to see these messages. Its ridiculous.
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James
commented
Amazed this has just reared its head for us. This is so obviously a bug in handling of permissions and sensitivity setting. It should apply to delegated mailboxes and not Shared Mailboxes, and should be handled the same regardless of how I access the mailbox with my credentials.
Can't really blame Microsoft for not getting on top of these bugs, as they need to ensure they have enough headcount working on the Start Menu UI.
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Stephen
commented
This is causing us problems as well. The only indicator is the unread messages counter doesn't match up. Is this a new phenomenon as we've been using shared mailboxes for years and never come across this before? Or is it just that people are using sensitivity settings more due to GDPR, etc?
Either way, this needs to be resolved quickly. The work around is not practical in large organisations. If we can see them through OWA, they must be allowed to be viewed in Outlook desktop too.
Microsoft please fix this urgently!
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Anonymous
commented
Should also apply to Outlook 2016
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BSS
commented
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P.O. -
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Anonymous
commented
I hope Microsoft will fix the issue as the steps below is troublesome. We have a lot of shared mailbox and I don't want to waste my time to follow the workaround.
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Junie Sng
commented
Please get consistent behaviour between the Outlook client and OWA.
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Sddq
commented
It doesn't make sense. A shared mailbox is shared, so everyone that is delegated to this shared mailbox can login the OWA and see those 'private'-mails.
If it does show up in OWA, why doesn't it show up in the Outlook client?
There should at least be an option for admins to control this.
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Nick van Strien
commented
agreed with this users comment:
We can't have users looking for unread items in Outlook and OWA on the off chance there is an item marked as Private. This is just daft behaviour. We need the option to disable the Private flag in a shared mailbox - the default is unworkable - the workaround of converting to a User mailbox and then giving Delegate Access the ability to see Private items is no good . There should be a Powershell cmdlet "Set-Mailbox -IgnorePrivate $true"
Or default behaviour should be different for mailbox type shared.
There is nothing private in a shared mailbox! -
Steven Underwood
commented
Our users see an unread message count, but can not see the message. The fix to convert to a regular mailbox, delegate with private and convert back worked, but we have almost 200 shared mailboxes.
Please put a request into the developers to include an option to allow administrators to allow private messages to be delivered to shared mailboxes in Outlook. It can even be off by default if there are security questions.
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Drew DiAngelo
commented
Bump. Please fix.