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Summary: Summary: Archive mailbox remains separate from the primary user mailbox, but it contains the most important part of whole Exchange account like shareable emails, contacts, and calendar details. The following article will provide the complete method to export contacts from shared mailboxes and how to keep it safe in PST file.

A shared mailbox in Exchange Server is a crucial place to send or receive messages collectively. In a professional organization, a shared mailbox is extremely helpful as it makes it easier to schedule the meetings, plan the vacations, manage the shifts, create calendar events and much more. You can see various examples of shared mailboxes in your organizations like technical support mailbox, customer support mailbox, help desk, complaint mailbox, etc. All these are shared mailbox where multiple users can receive the emails, rectify queries, and send solutions.

Properties of a shared mailbox

  1. The shared mailbox does not have a dedicated username and password, but the Exchange Administrator creates a generic email address like contact@compnaydomain.com, info@companydomain.com, support@compnaydomain.com, complaint@companydomain.com.
  2. Multiple users can get emails and reply to them.
  3. It centralizes the service required to the client. Any authorized user can answer to the requested service or query.
  4. A user cannot directly log on to a shared mailbox unless the administrator provides following permissions based on the action required by the users
    • Full Access: If a user has Full Access permission on a shared mailbox, then the user can access the emails, reply to them, create contacts, calendar event, and even delete the items.
      NOTE: Although the Full Access permission levels provide complete authority to the user, the user must have either “Send As” or “Send on Behalf” permissions also to send the email.
    • Send As: The user can send an email to the client from the shared mailbox.
    • Send on Behalf: with the help of Send on Behalf permission level, the user can send an email on behalf of the shared mailbox. For example, John is a member of IT support department. When John when either reply or send emails to the client, then the client will get a message with the sender as “John on Behalf of IT Support”.
    • User Permissions: Only the internal users of the organization can access a shared mailbox. The users outside of your business cannot access the shared mailbox.
    • Outlook usage: Apart from accessing the shared mailbox in Outlook application, you can get the shared mailbox in Outlook on the web, Outlook Android app, iOS app, etc.
    • Licensing: 50 GB is the total limit to store the data in a shared mailbox without the need for a license. After reaching the 50 GB limit, you need to assign a new license to it.
    • Encryption: There is no encryption feature for the messages in the shared mailbox. The user can use the send/receive feature to encrypt the message with their keys.
    • Multiple users: When multiple users are accessing the shared mailbox simultaneously, there are chances of message availability issues. So, you should restrict the number of user permissions to access the shared mailbox. You can also reduce the total workload of the mailbox by creating more Office 365 groups or public folders.

Till now you must have got the idea that shared mailbox is an important part of an organization, and it contains some vital information related to the business processes. To make sure that the data is always healthy and accessible, you need to take backup of the data at routine intervals and keep it at a secure location. Here, we will learn to export contacts from a shared mailbox. There is a manual process in Outlook (where you have configured the shared mailbox), by which you can export contacts to an external file. Here is the process-

  1. Start the Outlook application. Go to File, then click Open & Export option.
    Start the Outlook application
  2. Select the option Import/Export option.
    select Import/Export option
  3. Select the second option of Export to a File.
    Export to a File
  4. Select the option Comma Separated Values, then click Next.
    select Comma Separated Values
  5. Select the Contacts folder and click Next.
    select Contacts folder
  6. Browse the destination location and a new name to the CSV file.
    Browse the destination location
  7. Click the Finish button to finalize the process.
    finished the process

After completing the process, you can access the new CSV file with all your contacts in the shared mailbox.

Conclusion

This was the manual process of saving contacts from a shared mailbox to a CSV file. Although the contacts are saved, you can only access the contacts; you cannot use them instantly. To be able to use the contacts, you need to save the contacts in the PST file.

If you want to export a large amount of data and multiple mailboxes, then you should take the help of a professional Kernel for Exchange Server tool. It is the best tool which can export both healthy and corrupt files. It accesses the complete Exchange database and exports them to the desired destination. You can export EDB file to PST, Office 365, Exchange Online, and Public Folder.

Kernel for Exchange Server