Shared mailbox is similar to user mailbox but the main difference is that the shared mailbox can be used by different users at the same time, without the need of credentials. Also, shared mailbox doesn’t need a user Client Access License (CAL). For example, you can have a common (shared) mailbox, called sales, for all the sales team members.
Sometimes, situations arise where you need to convert the user mailbox to shared mailbox.For example, when a user leaves the company, you can convert the user mailbox to shared mailboxand continue using the shared resources without using a license.
Below, we will see the complete process to convert the user mailbox to shared mailbox.
It is not possible to convert a user mailbox to a shared mailbox or vice-versa using the Exchange Admin Center (EAC). So, the operation needs to be done using the Exchange Management Shell (EMS). For this, you need to use the Set-MailboxPowerShell command in EMS.
- First, confirm the status of the mailbox and see the type using the below command.
Get-Mailbox -Identity <user name>| Format-Table Name, RecipientTypeDetails
- The type is UserMailbox. To convert it to a shared mailbox, you need to use the below Set-Mailbox
Set-Mailbox <user name> -Type Shared
- After converting the mailbox, re-run the below command to see the type.
Get-Mailbox -Identity <user name>| Format-Table Name, RecipientTypeDetails
- The type should be shown as Shared.
- Alternatively, you can confirm this using the Exchange Admin Center (EAC).After login, click on Recipients and then click on the Shared The mailbox should be shown there.
- You will also notice that the user in the Active Directory is disabled. This doesn’t mean that the shared mailbox will not be accessible.It will only be accessible from another user’s mailbox, which has access to it. You can checked this in the Active Directory Users and Computers.
- If the user is given access to the mailbox, it will appear in their Outlook by default or Web access by opening another mailbox. Like other shared mailboxes, a user can be given ‘sendas’ and ‘send on behalf’ permissions, apart from full access.
- You can also convert multiple mailboxes into shared mailboxes with PowerShell.You can use the command to create a loop from a Comma-Separated Values(CSV) file with the username of the user mailboxes to be converted. This will speed up the process.
- In case of a mistake or issue, you need to convert the shared mailbox back to user mailbox.To do this, you can reverse the Set-Mailbox command (see the below example).
Set-Mailbox <user name> -Type Regular
Note: The Active Directory user will be automatically enabled by default.
Easy Solution for Migration and Movement of Data
The movement and migration of data can be a bit tricky.However, you can use a third-party EDB to PST Converter tool, like Stellar Converter for EDB, to simplify and speed up the data migration process.With this application, you can easily open multiple mailbox databases with no size limit and from any version of Exchange Server. You can granularly export the data from database files to PST and other file formats, such as EML, MSG, PDF, and HTML. You can also use the application to migrate your existing data fromon-premises Exchange Server to a live Exchange Server or Office 365 tenant with ease and simplicity.
Apart from migration of data, the application can come in handy when the server has failed and you need to recover the data from databases which were not damaged. You can easily create a new Exchange Server and import the data directly to the new Exchange Server with automatic mailbox matching. You can easily export user mailboxes, shared mailboxes, disabled mailboxes, and public folders.
Conclusion
You may need to move a user mailbox to a shared mailbox for archiving or preparing for a migration process and for the cleanup process to extract data.Above, we went through the process of converting a user mailbox to a shared mailbox. It is to be noted that when a mailbox is converted to shared, the associated Active Directory user is automatically disabled.
In case you need to migrate user mailboxes or shared mailboxes to another server, you can use Stellar Converter for EDB.It can easily open live or offline mailbox databases from any version of the server and with no size limit, and granularly export data to PST or directly to another database on alive Exchange Server.
