Access Shared Mailbox Only via Outlook

 

Intro:

I have a client who changes employees every year and they need to access a single mailbox and not their own. For example they have, "legal@xyz.com" and need 3 people send/receive as that email address and not their own. To do this we'll use what's known as a "shared mailbox".

We need to add users first then add the shared mailbox. I guess you could do it the other way around but without a user how would you access the shared mailbox?

*I'm doing this as a Microsoft Partner so some of the steps may need to be skipped or omitted if you don't have a Partner account.

Process to Add Users:

Login to https://admin.microsoft.com/ or https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home#/tenants (double check the tenant you're about to modify).

Select the tenant you wish to modify

Show All --> Users --> Active Users

Add a user --> Name, email address, select license (get from supplier), Roles = user, fill out profile info --> Finish Adding

Process to Add a Shared Mailbox:

Login to (https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/) or (https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/dashboard/home). If logging in as a Partner go to Customers --> Select customer --> Select Exchange under Administer Services. You should be taken to (https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/) and your tenant should be stated near the top left with two opposing arrows to the right of the customer name.

Recipients --> Mailboxes

The user you create previously should be listed here.

Add a shared mailbox

Enter display name, email address, leave alias blank --> Create

Add users to this mailbox --> Add members --> Select members you want to have view/send/receive access --> Save.

Add delegate permissions? Yes.

(To double check this --> Click on shared mailbox in question and on the flyout click, Delegation. "Send as" and "Read and manage (Full Access)" need to contain the user you want to have sending/receiving mail as this mailbox.) You will receive errors if this delegation is not selected.

You'll see, "It might take up to 60 minutes for the change to be effective in Outlook and OWA." or some other time frame. So far I've seen 5 minutes on a Saturday night and 60 minutes on Sunday. Who knows.

Refresh the "Manage Mailboxes" page.

You should see the new shared mailbox.

Currently shared mailboxes that do not have an license attached to it such as Exchange Online Plan 2 are limited to 50gb. See here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/email/about-shared-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide

As for the space, here's some context. It took me since the beginning of Gmail in 2004 until today, 2023, to use approximately 14gb of space consisting of emails only. There's the occasional photo or two but mostly text based emails. I use every day for a variety of things. 50gb is plenty for a small business that mainly does text based emails.

Access Only This Shared Mailbox via Outlook:

In this instance this is only an Exchange Online plan with email only. There is no Microsoft 365 (formerly O365) account with Word, Excel, Outlook, etc baked into the license.

Launch Outlook on the PC. If you blew out the profiles it'll ask you for a new profile name. Just name it "default".

Enter the email address for the shared mailbox.

Click "Advanced Options" --> "Let me set up my account manually" --> Connect.

Click on "Microsoft 365". At the time of writing this icon is a red/orange/pink square.

Click "Sign in with another account" in the single sign on box.

Type in the user's actual email --> Next.

Type in the user's password --> Sign in.

Click "Skip for now (14 days until this is required)". This will be replaced with MFA per user. Be sure to set up MFA for your user or have them do it. Use Authy.

Stay signed in to all your apps? Since we only want to sign in to the Office applications and not the entire OS as this Microsoft account, click, "No, sign in to this app only" near the bottom in blue --> OK --> Done.

Exchange Account Settings (verify shared mailbox is at the top of this box) --> Move slider to the right to download all email --> Next --> Uncheck "Set up Outlook Mobile on my phone, too" --> Done.

The shared mailbox is now the only mailbox signed in and the user can continue on. Make sure to send/receive test email to verify the delegation section set above is working.

My Notes:

Process to clear out old Outlook profiles and start fresh:

Outlook 2021 --> C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16 --> OLCFG.EXE --> Show Profiles --> Select a profile name --> Remove

Delete anything here if all profiles have been deleted: C:\Users\XXXXXX\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Start at (Access Only This Shared Mailbox via Outlook) to add a new mailbox from scratch.

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Thunderbird - Disable Automatic Updates

 

Intro:

I'm growing tired of seeing issues with this program that make it unusable. In my previous post I thought I found a way of resetting if you will; the mail boxes databases and retrieving missing emails. Yes, well that didn't work so I just rolled this back to v91.13.0.

Here's how to roll Thunderbird back and stop it from auto updating in the background.

Solution:

Thunderbird ➡ Tools ➡ Preferences ➡ Updates

• Make sure the following is the only thing selected:

Check for updates but let me choose whether to install them

Your selection should match the following screenshot:

Conclusion:

Unchecking, "Use a background service to install updates" should keep it from installing silently in the background. The next time you open Thunderbird you won't be on a newer version automatically.

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Thunderbird - Correct the Issue of Missing Emails in Folders

 

Update:

Well I thought that worked until I got a new email on my phone and no matter what I did I could not see the new message in Thunderbird v102.2.2.

I have since rolled back to v91.13.0 and disabled automatic updates until this is resolved.

Intro:

I kept seeing the wrong "Correspondent" in my sent mailbox paired with an email. It is sporadic however annoying. There's only like 200 emails in this particular mailbox. I tried repairing the folder multiple times and I still could not get it to correct itself. I got fed up and resorted to wiping the profile folder and starting over fresh.

However I seem to have found a less destructive fix for this, but since I do not code it wouldn't make much sense for me to waste time looking through the code to find the actual issue.

Also I posted this to Reddit and Mozilla's bug tracker over a month ago and it's still unresolved. The ones who did just suggested repairing the folder in question from within Thunderbird, which did not work.

Profile Location:

The profiles are kept in the following folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\

Solution:

First you need to identify which mailbox folder is having the issue.

You can try to repair it (right click on main mailbox folder, ie, Inbox, Drafts, or Sent, click properties, and under the "General Information" tab in the pop up, click, "Repair Folder"). If you've landed on this article then it's a safe bet that "Repair Folder" didn't work.

Once you've identified which folder is having the issue you need to navigate to this folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\Random-Characters-Go-Here.default\ImapMail\imap-mail.yourmailhost.com\

Let's assume the Sent folder is having issues such as displaying the correct subject line but with the wrong correspondent being show in line for that email.

• Inside of "imap-mail.yourmailhost.com" you will see two files with the same name but different extensions. One will be "Sent" without an extension and the other will be "Sent.msf". From what I understand, the ".msf" files is the database file for the Sent mail folder.

• Make sure Thunderbird is closed. Then delete the "Sent.msf" file.

If you see two Sent ".msf" files with a "-1" or "-2" after them follow this:

• One will be named, "Sent.msf" and the other "Sent-1.msf". You need to go and look at the file size of the actual "Sent" and "Sent-1" files. Whichever one is significantly larger, find the corresponding ".msf" file and delete it.

• Launch Thunderbird and when you click on the Sent folder you will see that it starts rebuilding itself and grabbing mail from the IMAP server.

Conclusion:

The issue should now be resolved. You can do this for any number of corresponding ".msf" files.

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Thunderbird - Email Hangs on Sending - SSL Settings

 

Intro:

Upon initial setup of inputting your email address and password, Thunderbird grabs the server settings for incoming and outgoing mail.

Everything looked right at first and emails starting rolling in. However outbound emails just hang. Upon closer inspection the outbound port is correct however the "Connection Security" states "SSL/TLS" and not "STARTTLS" as my mail server requires.

So I'm not sure if it's pulling "SSL/TLS" from my mail server or it's the way Thunderbird is interpreting it.

Note: These settings are for my mail server, yours may be different. Check with your provider.

Thunderbird version is v102.2.0 (64 bit).

Fix:

Hamburger Icon 👉 Account Settings 👉 Outgoing Server (SMTP) 👉 Edit.

• Verify port is 587.
• Change "Connection Security" from "SSL/TLS" to "STARTTLS".

Test email sending again.

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Thunderbird - Set Email Sorting Preference - Descending by Order Received

  

Intro:

During extensive testing of Thunderbird for a client project I noticed that the default sort order is Ascending with new emails at the bottom. I have no clue who decided that nonsense. I need it to be "Descending" with the newest emails at the top like Gmail and I want to sort the list by "Order Received".

You can sort by category as well, such as "Order Received". I'll reference the somewhat working URLs below, the original chart, and list the options below.

The link below is dead and the WayBack Machine has nothing:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/nsMsgViewSortOrder

Sort Type is defined by hex values here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20081118162338/https://developer.mozilla.org/en/nsMsgViewSortType

If you convert hex to decimal from the "nsMsgViewSortType" in the WayBack Machine's article, you'll get the values in my chart below.

Seems the developers thought it best to not let the WayBack Machine index anything. Great job people. Also I've searched https://developer.mozilla.org/ up and down and can't find these values even though they still use them. I mean it'd be great if there was an option in the UI to make these changes and apply them to all folders but, well you guessed it, there isn't.

We're talking about the latest version of Thunderbird here, v102.1.2 and the WayBack Machine's document is from 2009 🤦‍♂️.

Important:

This won't work on more than one folder unless you make this change prior to setting up your accounts. This part is very important. I know I reference where the preferences are stored below, but to avoid a huge headache after the fact, just reference this article first.

Solution:

1. Thunderbird ➡ Tools ➡ Preferences ➡ Scroll all the way to the bottom ➡ Config Editor

2. Search for:

mailnews.default

3. You'll see the following (the values below are defaults):

4. We'll edit the preferences in yellow first. There's only two options for this field, 1 or 2.

1 = Ascending
2 = Descending

Ascending (1) means, old emails at the top and new emails at the bottom.

Ascending:     OLD
                ⬇
               NEW

Descending (2) means, new emails at the top and old emails at the bottom.

Descending:    NEW
                ⬇
               OLD

5. Next are the preferences in blue. The following numbers correspond to the sort options:

17 = None
18 = Date
19 = Subject
20 = Author
21 = ID (Order Received)
22 = Thread
23 = Priority
24 = Status
25 = Size
26 = Flagged
27 = Unread
28 = Recipient
29 = Location
30 = Label
31 = Junk Status
32 = Attachments
33 = Account
34 = Custom
35 = Received

6. To sort everything by order received and newest at the top, copy the settings below:

*The green highlighted undo arrows show that you've modified a particular value from its default.

7. Now setup your email accounts.

8. Restart Thunderbird for good measure. Verify the changes.

Extras:

The preferences you're setting are saved to a file called "prefs.js" inside of your profile folder. You can search and add the following lines at the end of the file with the settings from the charts above for mass deployments. Once you open "Thunderbird.exe" these preferences will be slotted up midway in the "prefs.js" file around line 125. So if you're looking for these settings again in the file, start at or around line 125.

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\YOU-PROFILE.default-release\prefs.js

user_pref("mailnews.default_news_sort_order", 2);
user_pref("mailnews.default_sort_order", 2);
user_pref("mailnews.default_sort_type", 21);

Conclusion:

It'd be really great if the default sort order was like this out of the box. But then again developers never really listen to normal users.

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Thunderbird - How to Reset Email Client Back to Stock

 

Intro:

I have rewritten this article to include a link to another article that I wrote on correcting email subjects that do not match the correspondents. Click here for that article.

If you need to wipe the profiles folder for any reason, read below for how to do it.

Also be sure to read my other article on how to set default sorting preferences before setting up your profile and adding an email address or you'll be doing this process all over again.

Profile Location:

The profiles are kept in the following folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles

However if you only deleted the folders inside of "Profiles", you'd receive an error that your profile doesn't exist when you try to load Thunderbird. This is because it's looking at "%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\profiles.ini" which is telling it where your actual profile folder is.

Solution:

1. Close Thunderbird if running and delete the everything in the following folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\

2. Click here to learn how to set default sorting options before setting up your profile. If you set this after adding your email, you'll have to apply sorting options to each individual folder in your mailbox which will take too long.

3. If you followed the above article on default sorting options then you can add your email and setup your profile now.

PS:

You can force Thunderbird to show available profiles upon launch by changing the shortcut to match:

x32:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p

x64:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p

Conclusion:

Surprisingly there's no conclusion. It just works like it should.

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