Brian Tillman said:
In spite of what vanguardx said (even if he's most correct), there is
a solution to your problem, albeit not a perfect one. Google is your
friend. See my reply to someone else in microsoft.public.outlook
here:
http://tinyurl.com/7x8gd
"Some ISPs, on the other hand (SBC comes to mind) allow you to have
subaccounts under the
main one, each with their own distinct mailbox on the server, so it's
easy
to download one without affecting the other."
Subaccount, member account, associate account - different names for the
same thing: multiple *separate* mailboxes under one subscription. The
OP never revealed who is their ISP so there's no way to know if their
ISP provides multiple mailboxes.
I know some folks might suggest enabling the "leave messages on server"
option but then someone has to decide when to delete them (so when that
someone deletes them then maybe the other people sharing that single
mailbox haven't yet retrieved their messages). You can use the option
to leave them on the server for N days but then everyone sharing that
account must've retrieved a copy before then.
With Inbox selected, go to View -> Current View -> Define Views. With
the "current view" selected, click Copy (in this setup, I'm having to
create a new view instead of modifying your current one). Name it
whatever you want, like "View Mails with Me in To/Cc". You should then
get the View Summary screen (else you can change the view's properties
later). Click Filter. This is where you can define on what to filter
which will show only those messages that match the criteria. I am
assuming that the To or Cc header will show whatever was your e-mail
alias into this shared mailbox (obviously this view won't show you
messages in which you were Bcc'ed). If you defined a contact for
yourself, click on the Sent To button; otherwise, enter your e-mail
alias into the Sent To field, like "(e-mail address removed)". When you
click OK, you're back to the View Summary screen which shows you now
have a filter in this view. Click OK - unless you want to change other
view properties, like coloring your messages (which is yet again another
way to differentiate e-mails within a view, so you could color code
yours differently from the color used, if any, for the other users of
the same mailbox). Make sure your new or modified view is selected and
click Apply. You should now only see e-mails listed in the message list
pane that were addressed to you (i.e., they have your e-mail address in
the To or Cc header).
Be aware that unless your rules specify the same conditions (that your
e-mail must be in the To/Cc headers) then those rules exercise against
everyone's message. Also, this only affects your view of the downloaded
messages (so you only see yours). The problem of one user yanking all
the messages off the server so the other users can't see theirs is still
a problem. So enable the "Leave messages on the server" option in the
e-mail account settings. You could use the option "Remove from server
after N days" but that means all other users of the shared multi-aliased
mailbox must retrieve their messages before then (and have moved them
into a different folder before N days have passed). Instead, you might
just want to use the "Remove from server when deleted from the Deleted
Items folder". That way your messages and theirs remain on the server
indefinitely. Since each is using the customized view to see only their
messages in the mailbox then anything they do, like deleting them (and
again from the Deleted Items folder), will affect only their messages
that they manipulated. Again, make sure any rules you have specify to
act upon only those messages using the same criteria you used in the
filter for the view.
This expounds on Brian's solution. He suggested using the N-day
expiration instead of using the remove option. To that I add the
concept of using a filtered view so you only see those messages that
used your e-mail alias into that shared mailbox. Since everyone needs
to get their messages before the N-day expiration (when using that
option), I would set it to a value much longer than expected (like
someone taking a 2-week vacation and maybe not polling for e-mail for
another week, or more. So I'd set N to 30 days (hey, if they don't
retrieve it in a month then they lose it). However, I would also enable
the option to "Remove from server when deleted from Deleted Items" to
help keep down the quota usage of your shared mailbox. if a user
deleted their message then it doesn't need to use up disk space on the
server anymore. These options can up your chance of seeing duplicated
messages; see
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=292249.
It would be far easier to just get separate mailboxes rather than
sharing just one amongst two, or more, users. Trying to make Outlook
overcome deficiences in your e-mail service is not easy, not stable, and
more susceptible to user error. If the ISP only provides multiple
aliases into the same shared mailbox then you need to find a much better
ISP. That ISP doesn't have the resources to support multiple users,
like family members, sharing the same subscription so they cheated by
entering multiple entries into the aliases list to point into the same
mailbox. Aliases have a use, like defining them on-the-fly to release
to untrusted recipients and which expire (manually, timed, or by usage
count), but sharing one mailbox amongst several users just doesn't work
very well.
