Outlook - Viewing shared mailbox content older than the caching limit

DavidYorkshire 91 Reputation points
2020-08-28T14:51:01.093+00:00

I am configuring and testing the Office 365 apps prior to roll-out. I have set the Outlook caching limit to an enforced 1 month via GPO (necessary to avoid terminal servers getting overloaded with cached mail). In the user's own mailbox, this is fine and they see the link a the bottom of the folder to view email older than 1 month.

However, a number of them also have access to other mailboxes, and the folders in those just state "currently dislaying all messages newer than 1 month" at the bottom, with no link to see anything older.

Is there any way to resolve this - i.e. for there to be a link to see older email in the shared mailboxes as there is in the user's own mailbox?

Thanks

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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  1. Andy David - MVP 144.2K Reputation points MVP
    2020-08-31T17:27:36.58+00:00

    Hi @DavidYorkshire

    This indicates you can do this. But haven't tested.

    To change the shared folder caching behavior in Outlook 2010 or later versions to match the default behavior in Office Outlook 2007, you must add the following registry data to your Outlook client. In this situation, only non-mail folders such as the Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks folders are cached.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/982697/by-default-shared-mail-folders-are-downloaded-in-cached-mode-in-outloo

    I will say this, caching of any shared folder is something I never recommend. :) Outlook just isnt good at it( changes are coming in Office 365), so I never use it. You may find that cached calendars do not update sometimes and other frustrations with delegate access .

    Hopefully, this will get better soon for 365 users:
    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=26948
    21524-image.png

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  1. JeffYang-MSFT 6,241 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2020-08-31T10:14:19.457+00:00

    Do you mean the situation like below?
    21542-microsoftteams-image-1.png
    If so, as I know, it is by design and we do not have links to access older items.

    To check the older items in the shared mailbox, you could uncheck the "Download shared folders" option via File > Account Settings > Account Settings > Double click your email account > More Settings > Advanced to make only shared folders work with online mode and show all the items in your shared mailbox.

    If you still want the feature of using links to access older items in shared folders, as a workaround, you could try to close the automapping of the shared mailbox(if with full access) and then add the shared mailbox as a seperate email account in your Outlook profile and set the Exchange cache settings as well.

    Hope this can be helpful.

    If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
  2. Andy David - MVP 144.2K Reputation points MVP
    2020-08-28T15:46:21.76+00:00

    The recommendation is to not cache Shared Mailboxes actually. For lots of reasons:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3115602/performance-and-synchronization-problems-when-you-work-with-folders-in

    I would uncheck that option and restart Outlook:

    o disable the caching of all shared folders in Outlook 2010 and later versions, follow these steps:

    On the File tab, click Account Settings in the Account Settings list.
    In the Account Settings dialog box, click the E-mail tab and then double-click your Microsoft Exchange Server account.
    In the Change Account dialog box, click More Settings.
    In the Microsoft Exchange dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
    Click to clear the Download shared folders check box.
    21080-image.png

    Click OK two times.
    Click Next, click Finish, and then click Close.
    Restart Outlook.

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  3. DavidYorkshire 91 Reputation points
    2020-08-31T16:48:20.373+00:00

    Thanks both.

    We need the user's own mailbox to be cached for performance reasons, but it's less important that the shared ones are.

    I have tried unticking that option (download shared folders) in Outlook, and that does seem to do what we need. I now need to implement this by GPO.

    The GP setting appears to be Disable shared mail folder caching in Microsoft Outlook 2016\Outlook Options\Delegates, which sets registry key HKCU\software\policies\microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\cached mode\cacheothersmail

    I have therefore enabled this policy, and, using a test account, checked that it's applying on the client, which it appears to be as that key appears with a value of 0 (which I assume is correct? It's not entirely clear how the positives and negatives are applied in this policy as the name of the policy and the name of the registry key contradict each other)

    However, it doesn't seem to be applying in Outlook. Prior to applying the policy I ticked the box, and I would expect that once it applied the tick would disappear and the box would become greyed out. This hasn't happened. Any ideas? I have tried the usual gpupdate /force

    Thanks

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  4. DavidYorkshire 91 Reputation points
    2020-08-31T17:05:21.14+00:00

    OK, to add to the above I've found that I need to use Download shared non-mail folders in Microsoft Outlook 2016\Account Settings\Exchange\Cached Exchange Mode which creates key HKCU\software\policies\microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\cached mode\downloadsharedfolders and sets it to 0.

    Is it possible to cache calendars from shared mailboxes but not mail? I not we can no doubt put up with this, but it'll slow down calendar access somewhat.

    Thanks

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