Currently with a permission-based shared-mailbox, searches find only items within the current folder. That is, a search can search only a current shared-mailbox folder, or it will search the owner’s “all mailboxes,” and “all Outlook items”—not including the shared-mailbox folders. Outlook cannot search all of the shared-mailbox folders—each shared-mailbox subfolder must be searched individually. We understand that your engineers have reproduced this consequence, but the engineers have stated it is “by design.”

We request that a global change be made to allow searches of permission-based shared-mailbox folders when searching “all mailboxes.” Alternatively, we request a global change that would allow searches of selected folders, i.e., using control left-click to select the folders to search.

We request this change for reasons of security. In the legal field some attorneys only allow access to staff of specific folders or sets of folders to manage email items within them, thereby protecting privileged and confidential information contained in other folders. Simply adding shared-mailbox with access to all folders is, in many cases, a security risk. But many attorneys have many subfolders and requiring staff to search each subfolder is time consuming and inefficient.