Synching Contacts Shared by Other User Broken in New Outlook for Mac

Question

Synching Contacts Shared by Other User Broken in New Outlook for Mac

David Vazquez 0

An executive in my organization has his contacts delegated to two administrative assistants, who have been given Editor-level permissions to the executive's contacts. Both assistants are able to open the contacts and view them in the New Outlook interface. However, any edits, additions, or deletions of contacts made by either of the assistants are not seen on the other assistant's Mac or on the executive's Mac.

Switching to the Legacy Outlook view appears to fix this. Switching back to New Outlook breaks it again. However, one of the two assistants is unable to use Legacy Outlook due to essential workflows specific to the New Outlook, so staying on Legacy Outlook is not a valid solution for us.

Is this a known issue? Are there any work arounds? This is happening on the latest Outlook for Mac, 16.114.4 (26110224).

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Answer 1

Deogratias 95 Independent Advisor

Hello David

Based on your description, shared Contacts can be accessed in New Outlook for Mac, but updates made by one delegate are not syncing to other delegates or the mailbox owner.

Try the following:

Ensure Outlook and macOS are fully up to date.
Remove and re-add the shared Contacts folder.
Sign out of Outlook and sign back in.
Test whether the issue occurs in Outlook on the web. https://outlook.microsoft/

To help narrow this down:

Does the issue occur when editing contacts in Outlook on the web?
Are the mailboxes hosted in Exchange Online?

Warm Regards

David Vazquez 0 Reputation points

2026-11-10T15:57:42.97+00:00

Hi, thank you for your suggestions. The Microsoft support agent assigned to my case suggested many of the same things, but they did not resolve the issue. It seems to be a broken feature in New Outlook for Mac.

Also, I wanted to point out that you, AND the agent assigned to my case, AND the AI suggested initial response, all suggested trying my workflow in Outlook Web App (OWA), however all documentation I can find, as well as my own attempts to access contacts, tell me that accessing shared contacts on OWA has been deprecated. Why are all these different sources recommending I take an action that has been deprecated?
Deogratias 95 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-11-10T17:19:57.5866667+00:00

Thank you for the additional information.

Since the contacts work as expected in Classic Outlook for Mac, the delegation permissions appear to be configured correctly. This suggests the issue is specific to synchronization in New Outlook for Mac rather than the delegated access configuration itself.

I recommend continuing to work with your Microsoft Support engineer. If the issue cannot be resolved through standard troubleshooting, you may request an escalation through your existing support case for further investigation. At this time, I have not found any public Microsoft documentation confirming this as a known issue.