how can I make contacts from a shared Exchange mailbox show up in my Outlook address book?

Question

Running Exchange 2013 with Outlook 2013 clients.

I have AD (2012 R2) users with mailboxes, that have also been granted SendAs and Full Access to various shared mailboxes.

These shared mailboxes automatically show up when the user logs into Windows and opens their Outlook 2013.

If they click on the People category in Outlook 2013, they can see Contacts, under My Contacts, from both their user mailbox ([email protected]) as well as from the shared mailbox. Therefore, I can confirm that they have access to contacts from both sources.

However, when they go to actually compose an email, and open the address book to search for contacts, none of the available options from the pull-down menu give them access to the contacts stored in the shared mailbox.

How can I fix this?

Solution

Unfortunately, it is not possible to add the contacts from a shared mailbox, as this would require you to login to the share mailbox with full access permissions and download the address book from that mailbox. However, you can create a Public Folder Contact List that replicates the same functionality.

Comments

[Daniel]

Thanks for the answer. It seems stupid that I can access the contacts from the shared folder within Outlook, just not in the Address Book. I mean, the client clearly has access to the data, it just can't put the data in a different window? :p Also, as it is a shared mailbox, I don't even understand how that is considered a "user". How would I even "login" as a shared mailbox? It has no password.

[Tim]

When I said actual user, I meant that the user would have full access permissions and log into the mailbox to access the address book. See edited response.

[Tim]

Actually, how are you adding the shared mailbox? Are you adding it as a separate account, or are you adding at as an additional mailbox to the users account? The second way might combine the address books and get your desired functionality.

[Daniel]

In Exchange 2013 I grant a user SendAs and Full Access permissions to the Shared Mailbox (under the Shared Mailbox tab). It then shows up automagically as a separate folder in Outlook.