Managing Shared Mailbox Signatures and Sent Items in a Departmental Setup

Question

Hi all,

We have the following setup and requirements:

• Each user has their own individual work email account.
• Certain departments share a common email (e.g., accounting@company.com) that is accessed by all members of that department.
• When replying to emails from the shared departmental email, we need the sent emails to be stored in the shared email's Sent Items folder, so all members can see the replies.
• We do not want emails to be sent "on behalf of"; the recipient should see the email as coming directly from the department email address.
• We understand that a shared mailbox doesn’t support a default signature for everyone, but we need a way for each user to use their own signatures when sending from the shared mailbox.

Additional Context:

• We are currently using Outlook Classic due to compatibility requirements with our internal MS Access applications while sending emails. Until we can fully migrate to web apps, we need to continue using Outlook Classic.

Issues we've encountered:

• We’ve had problems in the past where signatures for two users in the shared mailbox synced and one overwrote the other, while the rest of the department did not experience this issue. It seems some users successfully set up their signature settings locally, which prevented syncing issues.
• Emails sent from the shared email are going into the personal Sent Items folder of the user. We've only granted "Send As" permissions in the past, but we're now experimenting with a shared mailbox setup where replies are copied to the shared mailbox's Sent Items folder. This seems to work, but we're still concerned about the signature issue.

Our questions:

1. Is there a reliable way to ensure that each user can use their own individual signatures when sending emails from a shared mailbox, particularly in Outlook Classic?
2. What is the best practice for managing shared mailboxes in Outlook Classic so that sent emails go to the shared mailbox's Sent Items and not the personal Sent Items, while also allowing for individual signatures?
3. We’re open to allowing users to log into their own and the department accounts separately, as long as signatures and sending behavior function correctly. Currently, the departmental account appears automatically when it detects "Send As" permissions—should we change this approach?

Thanks for any advice or solutions you can provide!

Answer 1

Hi @Joel Cheah ,

Welcome to our forum!

Is there a reliable way to ensure that each user can use their own individual signatures when sending emails from a shared mailbox, particularly in Outlook Classic?

No. I'm afraid that each user need to add their individual signatures manually before they send the email from shared mailbox.

What is the best practice for managing shared mailboxes in Outlook Classic so that sent emails go to the shared mailbox's Sent Items and not the personal Sent Items, while also allowing for individual signatures?

Please refer to this official article and try the solution mentioned in it:

• Method 1: Configure the mailbox to save a copy of the message to the Sent Items folder of the shared mailbox in Exchange Online or in on-premises Exchange Server
• Method 2: Set the DelegateSentItemsStyle registry value on the Outlook client (Note: Serious problems can occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Before making changes, back up the registry to restore it in case something goes wrong.)

About "while also allowing for individual signatures" you mentioned, as i mentioned in the Question 1, we cannot do that.

We’re open to allowing users to log into their own and the department accounts separately, as long as signatures and sending behavior function correctly. Currently, the departmental account appears automatically when it detects "Send As" permissions—should we change this approach?

If you want the users to send emails from the shared mailbox, you can keep the Send As permission. More information about the shared mailbox permissions: Which permissions should you use?

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