Office 365 Shared Mailbox not Showing in Outlook

Aftab Alam | Updated On - 29 Oct 2021 |

Read time 5 min

In recent years, the migration from the on-premises Exchange environment to Office 365 or cloud environment has become a trend, and many organizations are migrating their data completely to the Cloud. Generally, the transfer is quite smooth, and there are no significant hurdles which interrupt the process and stop it. Sometimes it happens that the end user is not able to view the data at the local Outlook application.

Shared Mailbox is Not Visible to Outlook

One issue which arises after the migration is that some users do not view the Shared mailbox in Outlook. A shared mailbox is an extremely useful secondary mailbox which facilitates the user to access the shared data. The standard accounts like sales@companydomain, contact@companydomain, and inform@companydomain are some typical example of the shared mailbox where the user can send or receive messages without needing a second pair of username or password.

Remove the Error – ‘The Folder You Selected is Not Available’

Usually, the Shared mailbox should come up instantly at the user’s Outlook profile. But if it is now showing, then the user may get an error message – ‘The folder you selected is not available.’ In such a case, you can manually add the mailbox to the account. Just follow the procedure:

1. Start the Outlook and click the File menu. Then select Account Settings >> Account Settings.
   
2. Select the account (with the shared mailbox). Then click Change.
   
3. Click More Settings.
   
4. In the Advanced tab, click the Add button.
   
5. Provide a new name to the mailbox. Then click OK and Apply.
   

After completing the process, you will be able to see the Shared mailbox in your Outlook profile.

If the profile does not show even after manually adding it, then you should go for troubleshooting the Outlook and see its results.

Enable the Troubleshooting Logging

1. Click File option and then select Options.
   
2. Go to Advanced tab and check the option Enable Troubleshooting logging.
   
3. Restart the Outlook and go to the temporary folder (%temp%). Here, check the recent logs which may show possible errors related to the shared mailbox. Then, take necessary action according to the given error.

Disable Automapping

Automapping is a feature in the Office 365 which automatically maps the shared mailbox to your Outlook account. But the Outlook stores all the data in the OST file. So, the data from the shared mailbox increases the data very much, and it can grow more than the optimal size of 50 GB. If the size of the OST file increase, then it may start giving problems and stop taking data from the shared mailbox. So, it is better to disable the automapping and add the shared mailbox as a separate profile.

Here is the complete process to disable the automapping.

1. Connect with PowerShell
   1. Open Windows PowerShell and run the command:
      $Credential = Get-Credential

      It will ask you to input your Office 365 credentials. Input them and click OK.

   2. Run the command to connect with Exchange;
      $ExchangeSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri “https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid” -Credential $credential -Authentication “Basic” -AllowRedirection
   3. Import the session:
      Import-PSSession $ExchangeSession
2. Remove permission for the shared mailbox.
   Run the command:
   Remove-MailboxPermission -Identity information@xyz.com -User michael@microsoft.com -AccessRights FullAccess

   The command will remove the access rights of the information shared mailbox to the user Michael.

3. Delete the shared mailbox.
   1. Follow File >> Account Settings >> Account Settings.
   2. Select the account, click Change option.
   3. Click the button More Settings and go to the Advanced tab.
   4. Select the shared mailbox and click Remove.
4. Reinstate the full access permission.
   Run the following command –
   Add-MailboxPermission -Identity information@xyz.com -User michael@xyz.com -AccessRights FullAccess -AutoMapping:$false

   The AutoMapping parameter will disable the automatic mapping.

5. Add the Shared Mailbox as a new mailbox.
   Add the shared mailbox as a normal account in the Outlook and Outlook will create a new data file (OST) for it.

After using all these methods, you should be able to see your shared mailbox content in Outlook. But, if you do not see the shared mailbox, it is possible that the migration of shared mailbox failed due to some reason. Then you should use a professional migrator tool which does not have any shortcoming and completes the migration process efficiently.

Conclusion

Kernel Office 365 Migration is a unique migrator tool which specializes in the migration between Exchange and Office 365 or vice-e-versa. It provides an option to migrate Office 365 shared mailbox to Office 365 group. You can also apply appropriate filters to the shared mailbox to migrate its content selectively to Office 365.