How do I see subfolders in an inbox I have delegate access to in Outlook?

March 11, 2009 4:17 AM

My nice boss has tried to make everyone's life easier by putting work she wants us to do in subfolders with our names on them, in her inbox. We all have delegate read access to her inbox but can't see the subfolders when we go to it. What permissions does she need to set us (or what else does she have to do) in order for us to see the subfolders?
posted by By The Grace of God to computers & internet (16 comments total)

Is this in exchange?

I've found exchange to be a finicky beast. In the past, the way I've done it is made the top level of the mailbox as "folder visible" for all users, and right click on each individual folder and add the necessary users with whatever level of permission they need. For some reason, perms just don't inherit from the parent folder to the subfolders. Would anyone else like to explain more scientifically why that is the case?
posted by orville sash at 5:00 AM on March 11 [1 favorite has favorites]

Why doesn't she just forward items to the appropriate people? That would be more... normal.
posted by rokusan at 5:16 AM on March 11

Wouldn't it make more sense to put the work for each of you in public folders, so you don't have the problem in the first place? I'm assuming you are using Exchange here, though.
posted by dg at 5:17 AM on March 11

Yeah we are using Exchange. But how it works in our firm is that our boss is able give us all the permissions she wants using Outlook's permission tools, up to writing and sending email permissions if she wanted to - so shouldn't the solution be within Outlook?

I will suggest the public folder solution but subfolder access still seems useful to me so would still be grateful for any leads on that.

Many thanks to everyone who has replied thus far.
posted by By The Grace of God at 5:24 AM on March 11

The main advantage to using public folders in Exchange is that you don't rely on that one person to manage all the permissions for your company. Using Outlook to manage this will work, but it's the wrong way to do it.
posted by dg at 5:37 AM on March 11

A utility called pfdavadmin can grant access to folders and their subfolders without you having to set those rights individually on each folder. It's a free app you can find on the Microsoft site. It's saved me countless hours.
posted by 8dot3 at 6:25 AM on March 11

Oh: pfdavadmin can be used for mailbox folders or public folders, so you can grant access to public folder hierarchies with it as well.
posted by 8dot3 at 6:26 AM on March 11

OK, let's get this right.

If she wishes to let others access subfolders under her own inbox, she must also grant a limited set of permissions to the parent folder first. So, right click inbox, change sharing properties, and give the appropriate people the "folder visible" property, nothing else. This right must be granted on all parent folders of the folder she wants to give access to.

For example, if she has a folder for you under Inbox\Employee Folders\Work\YourName, she will have to grant you "folder visible" to Inbox, Employee Folders and Work, as well as normal read access to YourName.

"Folder visible" does not allow you to read any items in the folder. It does grant you the ability to browse down to the subfolder you want, however. Without this you will either get access denied or simply not be able to see anything.
posted by splice at 7:04 AM on March 11

Oh, and if I recall correctly there is no inheritance of rights. So granting access to inbox does not imply access to the subfolders. This is all going from memory, mind you. I can test if necessary but so can you :).
posted by splice at 7:06 AM on March 11

If you're using Outlook and Exchange, she's DOING IT WRONG. She should be forgetting about the folders for each of you and creating assigned tasks instead. This can be done with any object, email or Office doc or whatever. She can keep everything in her folder hierarchy the way it is, assign tasks as she likes, and Exchange will track and notify her of any changes, completions, etc.
posted by rhizome at 10:00 AM on March 11

To clarify - The work she wants us to do is actually EMAILS she wants us to action, that she has received! She gets about eighty bazillion emails, so she just wants to triage them and shunt them into subfolders.

Actual TASKS not-related to an email are already sorted.

Sorry for being dumb!
posted by By The Grace of God at 11:49 AM on March 11

So... if there is no feedback for what we've suggested, I guess we should assume it's solved?
posted by splice at 12:18 PM on March 11

I have been out of the office much of the day and will be meeting with boss tomorrow in order to discuss solutions, so will choose best answers then, buyt splice your answer seems to be the likely candidate :)

also, an update - a colleague told me he called our IT support and they did something on his account and he can see her entire inbox and her subfolders now - as boss wants it - so it might be on the server.
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:26 PM on March 11

She can create tasks from the emails she is currently filtering. Heck, she can still organize emails by assignee, but as you note the tasks can be organized by assignee as well. In short, you/she can create tasks from emails very easily, much more easily than futzing with permissions on the server side.
posted by rhizome at 1:37 PM on March 11

To clarify - The work she wants us to do is actually EMAILS she wants us to action

Oh for heaven's sakes just forward the e-mails to the person you wish to assign!
posted by rokusan at 9:33 AM on March 12

Shes given up on this strategy and is now forwarding stuff to us like a normal person. :)
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:13 PM on April 10