Microsoft 365 Email/Outlook putting sent emails into personal mailbox instead of shared mailbox

JD 0 Reputation points
2026-10-30T14:35:24.4733333+00:00

Hi,

Our company recently transitioned from one provider to Microsoft. The issue I'm having is that there are 3 of us here, and we have a shared mailbox. Whenever we reply to someone or delete an email, it goes into that person's personal mailbox, even though we're using the shared mailbox. I don't know who decided this was a smart thing to do, but it's asinine.

I have one employee out today, so now neither of us here can check to see who she replied to, or if she replied to. We don't have her phone here to use the authenticator to log in to her personal email to check. This is stupid.

So now my options are to email the customer back, and if she already emailed, we look stupid for emailing again, or I ignore the emails until she's back on Monday, and look stupid for ignoring the customer.

How can this be changed? All sent and deleted emails from the shared mailbox need to stay in the shared mailbox so everyone can see it. Why does the shared mailbox even have it's own "sent" and "deleted" folders (that you can't delete) if it's not going to use them? This is just terrible design lacking common sense.

This email change was forced by corporate, so it's been an extremely frustrating and confusing experience.

Please tell me how I can get this changed. Thank you.

Edit The AI response said to do something through administrator stuff, which we don't have access to I don't think? It's a large corporation/franchise, and we get the email access through them.

Outlook | Web | Outlook on the web for business | Email
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  1. Roebe Ta 1,825 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2026-10-30T15:19:55.97+00:00

    Hi @JD ,

    I completely understand your concern.

    What you're describing is actually the default behavior for shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365.

    For Sent Items: By default, messages sent from a shared mailbox are often saved in the sender's personal Sent Items folder rather than the shared mailbox's Sent Items folder.

    Fortunately, this can be changed by a Exchange Online administrator/your IT team.

    If you don't have any administrative role and aren't sure who the Microsoft 365 administrator is in your organization, Microsoft has guidance on how to identify the appropriate contact to request assistance: How can I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support . Since you're part of a larger corporation/franchise, you'll likely need to reach out to your corporate IT team or Microsoft 365 administrator and ask them to review the shared mailbox settings for Sent Items and Deleted Items behavior. These changes typically require Exchange Online administrative permissions and can't be made by regular mailbox users.

    An Exchange administrator can enable one or both of the following settings:

    Set-Mailbox <shared mailbox> -MessageCopyForSentAsEnabled $True
Set-Mailbox <shared mailbox> -MessageCopyForSendOnBehalfEnabled $True

    Once enabled, emails sent from the shared mailbox will be saved in the shared mailbox's Sent Items folder so all members can see what has been sent. This is the officially supported solution and is the method that applies to new Outlook and Outlook on the web.

    For reference, please see the Microsoft article: Messages sent from a shared mailbox aren't saved to the Sent Items folder.

    For Deleted items: By default, when someone deletes an item from a shared mailbox, the item may be moved to the delegate's personal Deleted Items folder instead of the shared mailbox's Deleted Items folder.

    There's a practical workaround that many organizations use. Instead of accessing the shared mailbox as an automatically mapped mailbox, open it as a separate mailbox using Outlook on the web:

    • Select your profile picture in the top-right corner.
    • Choose Open another mailbox.

    User's image

    • Enter the shared mailbox account and open the shared mailbox.
    • Perform mailbox actions (including deleting messages) from that separate shared mailbox window.

    When working directly within the shared mailbox window, deleted items are moved to the shared mailbox's Deleted Items folder instead of your personal mailbox's Deleted Items folder. This can help teams maintain visibility into which messages have been removed.

    Combined with enabling shared mailbox Sent Items, this usually provides a much better experience for teams that collaborate from a common mailbox.

    I hope this information helps. If you need any further assistance, please feel free to let me know.

    Kind Regards.

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