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Sal SoriceFlag for United States of America

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Outlook Categories: Is there a way to have a SharedMailbox with consistent Categories for all Users that access the mailbox?

I have a client who moved to O365 from in-house. Their Public Folders were migrated (using BitTitan.com). Problem is that each user has their own individual list of Categories (just how Outlook works from what I have read). But if they open up a Contact they will see all the categories assigned to that Contact by them or anyone else (but they will be white, not colored). Again, how Outlook works I guess.

I learned the above from this great explanation (thanks David Lee!):
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28374526/categories-Outlook-2010-not-showing-for-all-users.html

I'm wondering if we could create a SharedMailbox and then cleanup/fix their categories while logged into that mailbox and ONLY use that mailbox to manage categories going forward.

But, I fear that unless the SharedMailbox is opened exclusively in Outlook and Categories are then managed while logged onto that mailbox only, category chaos would resume (ie, if the SharedMailbox was later opened as another Mailbox by a user and they assigned/managed categories the categories would be from their personal profile).

Hope I've explained this clearly :^)

Has anyone come up with a way to tame the category beast so that categories can be centrally created/assigned/managed for a SharedMailbox that users can then access (but not mess with)?
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David Lee
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Thanks David! Was hoping there was a better way to centrally manage categories (as they can get really messed up and confusing), but your explanation makes it very clear regarding what can and can't be controlled.
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jiv

David said
 In fact, there is no way I know of to enforce a set of categories across mailboxes.  
However we created Category and color management for outlook. It manages and enforces categories (if so desired) for configurable groups of Outlook users.