Limitations of Office 365 Shared Mailbox are Explained Along with Solutions

Do you know what are shared mailboxes in Office 365? How many these kinds of mailboxes are provided by MS Office 365? Do they require any license to activate shared mailbox? What is the Office 365 shared mailbox limitations and how to cope up with them? If not, then you are at the right place as this article will answer all your questions.

limitations of O365 shared mailbox

What is Shared Mailbox in Office 365?

A shared O365 mailbox is basically a free mailbox which does not require any license to be allocated. But there are some limitations associated with it. It offers 50 GB size limit and can be increased but requires a license to be allocated which is one of the limitations of O365 shared mailbox.

This mailbox is an account which can be used by more than one user. It allows users to send or receive emails from common mailbox. This comes handy for the team members to share the load and multiple users can reply to the customer enquires from same email address.

This mailbox is not anyone’s primary mailbox, but a secondary mailbox using which users can send or receive emails. It does not have any specific password to access it which means no one can log in to the mailbox directly. Only O365 admin can add you as a member of the mailbox and that can be accessed from your primary mailbox.

What are Office 365 Shared Mailbox Limitations?

Despite having so many benefits, there are some associated limitations as well with the shared mailbox. If a user does not keep track of it, then there are chances of data loss as well. Some of the limitations are explained in detail below along with the steps to cope up with them.

Limitation 1

There can be situations where the Administrator converts the ex-employee’s mailbox into shared mailbox so that other employees can access his/her data without any issue. However, there are chances that when the Admin tries to do the same, some issue arises in configuration. You can understand this scenario in detail after having a look at the follow query:

Limitation 2

Another limitation of O365 shared mailbox is that the inbuilt email application in mobile devices does not provide support for O365 shared mailbox. This issue is one of the most common limitations of Office 365 shared mailbox. To get rid of this issue and access your emails in your phone, you need to download OWA. Once, you have installed the application, the shared mailbox will be displayed after configuring your primary account.

Limitation 3

There is an Office 365 shared mailbox limitation in which the users get only 50 GB of storage space but does not require any license to be allocated. Moreover, if the mailbox size gets full, the data of the account will be removed. So, to extend the storage space, the Administrator needs to allocate Exchange Online Plan 1 or 2 license in which users will get extra storage space and the option of In-place archive and litigation hold.

The alternative of this solution is that users can go for a third-party solution using which users can export Office 365 shared mailbox to PST on your system. So, whenever you see that the shared mailbox storage limit is reaching close to 50 GB, then you can download and use this software.

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Furthermore, the additional features of the tool such as exporting selective data while migration as well as the option to pause and resume the process according to your requirement.

Concluding Lines

Office 365 offers a great number of features to its users and shared mailbox is one of them. But there are some Office 365 shared mailbox limitations which can cause data loss or the organizations which they cannot afford. As nowadays, large amount of data is processed on daily basis and O365 shared mailbox size limit of 50 GB is allocated. So, it becomes important for the organizations to keep a copy of their crucial data in local system. Therefore, we have shared a secure and reliable solution for the users to do the same.