Office 365 Shared Mailbox Limitations: What You Need to Know

Summary: In this detailed article, we learn about Office 365 shared mailbox limitations and what are the reasons to opt for a group mailbox. In addition, many users have the query for the same, but they need help finding the exact solution for that thing. So, this write-up can help you to gain knowledge, with the relevant answers. 

Let’s initiate this blog by presenting an overview of the limitations associated with Office 365 shared mailboxes.

An Overview of Office 365 Shared Mailbox Limitations

Office 365 Shared Mailboxes provide access to email for group collaboration, but they have restrictions. It has an upper ceiling of 50GB, which is not enough for large companies that operate Terabytes of data daily. Moreover, shared mailboxes depend on a licensed user to send emails out; they are unable to send emails on their own. 

It does not have a calendar-sharing functionality, so that is the reason, shared mailboxes are not suitable for scheduling and event management. Also, it lacks many advanced options available, like email retention regulations and many more. Due to these drawbacks, shared mailboxes are more appropriate for simple collaborative email needs. 

Meaning of Shared Mailboxes

A shared was developed by M365 Admin and the purpose behind making it was for receiving and sending emails within a single address. It is very important for users to know this key, that shared mailboxes are configured to be available by different end-users. 

For example, your business may have a specific email address for customers seeking reservations or another for those seeking shipping information. You can also assign an email address to a location or situation, such as receiving or shipping. In these cases, it is likely that many people will correct the message and reply to the given address. Setting up a shared mailbox is a perfect way to manage messages when you have multiple users in the same inbox.

Additional resource: Import PST to Shared Mailbox Office 365

Establishing Shared Email Addresses: Step-by-Step Process

Above we saw the overview of Office 365 shared mailbox limitations, but many users are frequently asked the question, can I create shared mailboxes efficiently? So, in this part of the phase, we learn the most reliable steps for the same.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Sign in to your Exchange administrator account with your Microsoft 365 global administrator credentials.
2. Then, select the Exchange admin center.
3. After that, select Teams and Groups>>Click on Shared Mailboxes.
4. Now, Select + Add a shared mailbox and give a name for the shared mailbox. Then, hit Save Changes.
5. Lastly, Use the Add members button>>select Add>>Close.

Exploring Office 365 Shared Mailbox Limitations

There are several limitations to the M365 shared mailbox, which users have faced in recent times. So, some of them are the following:

1. As we saw above the limit of shared mailboxes is up to 50 GB and when your limit will exceeded, any message will not land in your mailbox. Until you free up the space by deleting unnecessary items or archiving old mail.
2. Its maximum sharing message limit is 150 MB which can have a negative impact on organizations, that need to transfer large volumes of data.
3. Any user can access the shared mailbox, by providing specific permissions as it does have not a password security functionality. This is another drawback of it for the security purpose.
4. To access the shared mailboxes, users need an M365 license. In addition, it is important to note that shared mailboxes do not provide separate licenses.
5. It will automatically disconnect when any user does not actively perform some activity in it.
6. When you need to see calendars you need to open them separately since shared mailboxes do not have their own calendars.
7. Within Outlook, shared mailboxes can’t provide a conversation view, and this also can be a consequence for some users.
8. If a user needs to find the data by searching in shared mailboxes. So, it can be a time-consuming task, as it does not support searching a large number of data across in it.
9. With mobile phones, you can use shared mailboxes as it does not support to work within it. To overcome this drawback, you can use OWA, and after downloading this software, you need to configure it with your primary account. Then, your shared mailbox will be displayed, and you can efficiently work in it.

Also read: Office 365 Mailbox Types

How to Backup Shared Mailboxes Data Efficiently?

After discussing this entire blog, in the context of Office 365 shared mailbox limitations. Many users have the question in their mind, after exceeding the limit of shared mailboxes, what should I do? So, there is a solution that you can back up your entire data, and then, your emails start arriving like before. 

The question arises can we back up the data efficiently? And the answer is yes because there is specialized software that can perform this task easily. Also, there is a traditional approach but it is not up to the mark, that is the reason we prefer an automated approach.

On top of that, the tool is SysTools’ Most Reliable Office 365 Backup & Restore Software which can make the procedures as smooth as expected. This software can save Outlook 365 Emails, Contacts, Calendars, and Documents and can be accessed offline. 

Here are the steps of the above-mentioned tool to overcome Office 365 shared mailbox limitations:

Step 1. Download and Launch the backup tool.

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Step 2. Opt for ‘Office 365’ as your source and ‘Outlook’ as your destination.

Step 3. Select the categories that you want to back up from Office 365 under the Workload selection.

Step 4. By using the date filter option, you can back up selective data. Click on Next.

Step 5.  Next, provide the Admin email ID and Application ID for the Source platform, then proceed by clicking the Validate button.

Step 6. Then, browse the backup folder path to set the destination where the PST file will be saved.

Step 7. When it comes to mapping tasks, the software offers three choices: ‘Fetch Users,’ ‘Import Users,’ and ‘Download Template.’

Step 8. Lastly, click on the Start button.

Final Words

In this comprehensive write-up, we learned about Office 365 shared mailbox limitations. In addition, we covered creating a shared mailbox, with easy steps. After that, we discussed the drawbacks of the same. To bypass these consequences we found professional software to back up the data which is more reliable than the conventional method.