Question about deleting items in a delegated mailbox

Question

Hi All,

Recently a user A was delegated full access to a mailbox of the resigned user B.

After full access was delegated the user A deleted heaps of items in the mailbox if the user B.

Those items were placed in the Deleted Items folders of the user A not user B and overfilled user A's mailbox.

My question is if it is by design that items deleted in the delegated mailbox are placed to the Deleted Items folder of the user who was delegated access.

If yes then is it possible to change this behaviour so that deleted items in the delegated mailbox were placed to the Deleted Items folder of that mailbox.

Answer 1

Hi @Cloud_Geek_82

My question is if it is by design that items deleted in the delegated mailbox are placed to the Deleted Items folder of the user who was delegated access. If yes then is it possible to change this behaviour so that deleted items in the delegated mailbox were placed to the Deleted Items folder of that mailbox.

Agreed with Ayla that it's the by design behavior.

However, according to the official document below, this behavior can be changed using Windows registry setting. For more detailed instructions, you can refer to: Items that are deleted from a shared mailbox go to the wrong folder in Outlook.

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Answer 2

Yes, it is by design that items deleted in a delegated mailbox are placed in the Deleted Items folder of the user who was delegated access. This is because the delegate is essentially acting as the owner of the mailbox when they are performing operations on it.

There is no way to change this behavior by default. However, there is a workaround that you can use. You can create a retention policy for the delegated mailbox that will automatically move deleted items to a different folder after a certain period of time.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Exchange Admin Center.
2. Navigate to Mailboxes > Retention policies.
3. Click New and select Retention policy.
4. Give the policy a name and description.
5. Under Retention tags, click + and select Add retention tag.
6. Give the retention tag a name and description. Under Retention action, select Move to folder.
7. Select the folder where you want deleted items to be moved to.
8. Under Retention period, select the period of time that you want deleted items to be retained before they are moved to the other folder. Click Save.

Once you have created the retention policy, you need to assign it to the delegated mailbox. To do this, follow these steps:

• Go to the Exchange Admin Center.
• Navigate to Mailboxes > Mailboxes.
• Select the delegated mailbox and click Edit.
• Under Retention policy, select the retention policy that you created in the previous step.
• Click Save.

Now, when the delegate deletes items in the mailbox, they will be automatically moved to the folder that you specified in the retention policy after the specified period of time.

Please note that this workaround will only move deleted items after the specified period of time. If the delegate needs to move deleted items immediately, they will need to do so manually.

Hope it helps, let me know if you need to ask anything further.

Answer 3

1. Remove delegate permissions to the shared mailbox.
2. Once shared mailbox folder is gone from outlook run powershell command to add mailbox permissions back but with automapping set to $false
3. On the users outlook profile, add the shared mailbox as a NEW email account.
   1. Case MUST match how its listed within exchange admin center. 
   2. Failure to match case will add the mailbox but deleted items will still go to the delegate not the mailbox owner.
   3. 1st try I added <email>, added but deleting didn’t work.  Removed account.
   4. 2nd try added as <email>, matching the case of the exchange account worked.
4. Once added matching case, deleting things from the shared mailbox will result in the deleted item going to the deleted folder of the shared mailbox