Office 365 Shared Mailboxes

[benjo]

Hello

We've got a large amount of shared mailboxes (resource mailboxes?) that some of our users would like to have on their mobile devices.

The Microsoft documentation here states:

A shared mailbox doesn't have its own user name and password. You can't log into a shared mailbox directly using Outlook, Outlook Web App, Exchange ActiveSync, Exchange Web Services (EWS), or any other Exchange protocol. You must first be granted permissions to the shared mailbox, and then you access it using Outlook or Outlook Web App.

However we were able to reset the "password" to the shared mailbox on the Exchange Admin Center and then we could use this new password to log into the mailbox via iOS/Android/Webmail. We could even add it as a new account to Outlook on PC and Mac.

Is this a work around that we shouldn't be using, or has something changed to allow us to do this?

 

[benjo]

Shared Mailboxes have a disabled user account tied to it and as such has no license tied to it.

Since you've reset the password and granted access to it, does this now have a valid license tied to it?

Soon as you add a license to the shared mailbox you can then login and reset passwords etc.

I did wonder whether it would consume a license but I've double checked and it's not.

In fact we're at our capacity on licenses so even if it wanted to it wouldn't be able