Shared email folders in Outlook

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Shared email folders allow multiple users to look at a single email folder, and to save emails into that folder (assuming appropriate permissions have been granted). Each shared email folder must have at least one donor (the original owner of the email folder) and can have numerous recipients (who are granted access to the shared folder).

 

Key benefits of shared email folders are that they save the effort of constantly forwarding emails to other persons on the same network, and allow multiple users to save all emails related to a client matter into a single folder which avoids the need to assemble a collection of such emails elsewhere (e.g. in a hardcopy file folder containing printed copies of all emails, which is wasteful, inefficient, and expensive).

 

The permissions granted can be modified to give recipients a high level of power (e.g. to delete emails), a low level of power (e.g. only view messages, but not save messages into the folder), or some appropriate level of power between those extremes. The donor controls the level of permissions granted to each recipient, and care must be exercised when granting permissions e.g. if a donor grants a recipient the power to delete emails then that recipient may use that power to intentionally (or perhaps accidentally) delete emails.

 

The following sets out the steps the donor and each recipient need to go through to set up shared email folders.

 

The following describes the steps to be followed by the donor in order to set up a shared email folder:

 

 

 

 

1) Highlight the name of the recipient in the list at the top of the Permissions tab (in the screenshot below “Anonymous” is highlighted).

2) Using the checkboxes in the four categories (“Read”, “Write”, “Delete Items”, “Other”) near the bottom of the Permissions tab you can adjust the permissions to be granted to the recipient. Alternatively, you can select a pre-defined set of permissions from the “Permission Level” drop down list. For most donors the “Publishing Author” option available on the Permission Level drop down list (see screenshot below) will provide appropriate permissions to the recipient i.e. the recipient will be able to review all emails in the folder, and will be able to save emails to the folder, but will not be able to delete the donor’s emails from the folder.

 

3) Click Apply.

4) Repeat the three steps above for parent (and grandparent) folders, applying appropriate permissions in each case. In this example one would only have to set the permissions on the “Dunbar” folder and the “1 – Active Files” folder, but if you have more than two levels of folders then you should apply appropriate permissions at each of those additional levels as well. This step is very important, if you do not define the permissions all the way up the folder tree the shared folder will not work.

 

 

5) Give the recipient “Folder visible” permission to your entire email account. Note that this will not grant the recipient access to your Inbox or other folders in your email account apart from subfolders you have given higher level permissions to, but this minimum “Folder visible” permission is necessary at the top level in order for Outlook to show the lower subfolders for which higher level permissions have been granted. To reiterate, if you select the “None” option from the “Permission Level” dropdown list and check only the “Folder visible” box then the recipient will only be able to see that the folder exists and will not be able to see the contents of the folder (e.g. note how the “Read” permission is set to “None” in the screenshot below).

 

 

If you do not wish the recipients to see the contents of the various intermediate folders between the top level folder and the folder that you intend to share with them, give them just “Folder visible” permissions to those various intermediate folders. To reiterate:

 

Note that when the permissions on a particular folder are adjusted they do not cascade down to pre-existing subfolders, but the permissions are inherited by new subfolders created after the permissions are set on the parent folder. Therefore, in this example:

1) If you gave a recipient “Publishing Author” permissions to the “1 – Active Files” folder then the recipient will have “Publishing Author” permissions to all subfolders subsequently created under “1 – Active Files”. This might be appropriate if the recipient is an administrative assistant who should have access to all newly opened client files.  

2) If you do not want the recipient to have “Publishing Author” permissions to future folders subsequently created under “1 – Active Files” then set the Permission Level of the “1 – Active Files” folder to “None” and only check the “Folder visible” checkbox (to ensure that the recipient can look down and through that folder level). Note that because the subsequently created subfolders will have permissions of “None”, but with “Folder visible” checked, the recipient will be able to see the subsequently created folders, but will not be able to see anything inside those subsequently created folders. If the donor wants to hide from the recipient the names of the subsequently created subfolders then the donor will have to physically uncheck the “Folder visible” checkbox for each of those subsequently created subfolders at the time of creating them.

 

Setting permissions may seem overwhelming at first, but after doing it a few times you will get the hang of it and then adjusting permissions to give appropriate access to others will take just a few seconds each time a new email folder is set up.

 

The recipient of a shared folder should perform the following steps when first receiving access to a shared folder from a particular donor:

 

 

 

 

 

If the donor and the recipient are both sending emails on the same client matter they should both regularly file incoming and outgoing messages into the shared folder to ensure that the shared folder contains a complete library of relevant messages.