How to Control the Behavior of Sent Items When Using Shared Mailboxes?

Multiple users often use a single Exchange mailbox to communicate with their customers. While using a shared mailbox, it is extremely important for businesses to retain the record of sent items. Exchange 2010 allows users to control the behavior of sent items when they are sent by using a shared mailbox. However, this feature is not available in Exchange 2013 and latest versions. However, many users still don’t know how they can control the sent items behavior in shared mailboxes with Exchange 2010.

In this article, we will discuss how you can control sent items behavior in Exchange 2010 and other versions.

Exchange 2010

For Exchange 2010, you need to install Exchange Server 2010 SP3 on your system to activate this feature. After installing the 2010 SP3, there are two parameters related to Sent items in shared mailboxes.

• SendAsItemsCopiedTo
• SendOnBehalfOfItemsCopiedTo

You can configure these two parameters separately. There are two values that can be used to configure the sent items behavior:

• Sender – Message will be stored in the Sent Items folder of the user who sends the message.
• SenderAndFrom – Message will be stored in both the Sent Items folder of the user and the Sent items folder of the shared mailboxes.

An additional value of “From” will be reserved for future purposes.

Now, you can configure the Sales mailbox using the below command in Exchange Management Shell:

It will take at least 10 minutes to make changes to the mailboxes. So, when a user sends email as the Sales mailbox, it will be stored in Sent Items of the Sales mailbox and his own.

Exchange 2013/2016

In 2015, some modifications were made to Exchange 2013 in CU9 that changes the behavior of sent items with shared mailboxes. You can modify the send item settings with the help of MS Outlook. But there are some requirements that every user need to make these changes.

• You can apply the changes only if you have full access to shared mailboxes to send emails.
• You need administrator rights to edit Windows Registry.
• The cached mode must be enabled for the Outlook.
• The mailbox with full access must be added to your Outlook profile.

Now, follow the below steps to change the behavior of Sent items in shared mailboxes for Exchange 2013/2016.

1. Click Window+R and type Regedit, and then click OK.
2. Now, go to the following section:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Outlook\Preferences

Note: The x.0 is the Outlook version installed on your system.

3. Find the Edit menu and right-click on it, go to New > DWORD Value.
4. Type DelegateSentItemsStyle and hit Enter.
5. The DelegateSentItemsStyle wizard will appear on the screen, type the value 1 in the box and click OK.

This way you can keep the sent items in the desired folder of your mailbox. However, a new feature has been added to Office 365, Exchange 2013/2016 that allows you to enable/disable sent items behavior from Settings. Here is how you can enable it.

Note: In Office 365 and Exchange 2013 CU9, this feature is disabled by default.

• Sign-in to Office 365 with Admin portal and go to Groups.
• In the Groups section, select Shared mailboxes, and then Edit the Sent items copy status of the mailboxes.
• Now, use the below PowerShell command for emails Sent As the Shared mailbox:

Set-mailbox -MessageCopyForSentAsEnabled $True

• For emails Sent On the Behalf of Shared mailboxes, use the following command.

Set-mailbox -MessageCopyForSendOnBehalfEnabled $True

• Similarly, you can disable the feature by setting the value to $False.

Well, if you’re still using Exchange 2010 and its time to upgrade yourself to the latest version of Exchange that allows you to change the behavior of sent items quickly. But, the exchange migration process is not that easy; it requires a lot of time, efforts, and knowledge of using PowerShell cmdlets to migrate data from one Exchange server to another.

However, there is an effective tool that allows you to migrate Exchange data quickly from one Exchange Server to another – Exchange Migration. It is specially designed to migrate Exchange data. Using this software, you can even migrate Exchange mailboxes to Office 365. Also, the advanced features of the tool like selective migration, deleted item recovery, exclude/include folder make it a viable choice for migration.

Conclusion

Retaining the sent items in the shared mailbox is an essential aspect for a business as it has such emails that were sent to the client on behalf of your business. If you plan to migrate the Exchange Server database, the Exchange Migrator will help you select the shared mailbox information and migrate it easily.