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If two or more people have access to the same mailbox in Outlook, is it possible that each of them can decide for themselves which mails in this mailbox are marked as read?

DR 41 Reputation points
2022-07-15T11:02:41.907+00:00

And this decision does not affect the other colleagues.
So a colleague reads the mail and changes the status to "read", but for everyone else with access to this mail the status does not change to "read"

Thanks in advance

Kind regards

Outlook Management
Outlook Management
Outlook: A family of Microsoft email and calendar products.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online: A Microsoft email and calendaring hosted service.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Alex 76 Reputation points
    2022-07-21T02:52:48.857+00:00

    I had this issue in my current role and devised a separation of duties for the mailbox monitoring. I work 2nd shift, with 2 other individuals (one who isn't full-time) and the companies SOP is that the service desk inbox is monitored 24/7 to keep or SLA's. Well, the issue that you brought up was a problem as any 1 of us could inadvertently click on an email and it would go into read status, causing problems if the email needed actions taken. I divided the mailbox duties between myself and the other full-timer so that the first half of the shift is my responsibility for the inbox, afterwards would be the other persons.
    **If one of us had clicked on an email and it was not already in read status, then we all agree to place the Unread status back on that email for the person responsible to deal with.

    Hopefully this helps as the only other way I know to deal with this was address by AndyDavid.

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  1. Andy David - MVP 145.6K Reputation points MVP
    2022-07-15T11:46:32.393+00:00

    Per-user Read counts are not possible in Shared Mailboxes.

    Some work-arounds:
    https://exchange-server-guide.blogspot.com/2016/11/shared-mailbox-in-outlook-message-read-unread.html

    Alternatively, you can use Public Folders or Office 365 Groups which do maintain per-user read counts.

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  2. ChristyZhang-MSFT 22,336 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2022-07-18T02:29:41.913+00:00

    Hi @DR ,

    Welcome to our forum!

    Agree with Andy. Based on my test on shared mailbox, I found that the status of email is synced to other users' Outlook client when someone read it. I'm afraid we cannot make the read/unread status of emails changed for each user.

    In addition, through my research, I found that there's a method to distinguish those messages that have been read by all members by creating a Conditional Formatting rule. If you need, please refer to this article: Who has already read that message in our shared mailbox?.
    (Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.)

    Hope the above help!

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