Sharing Information in Outlook

Why would you want to share information with someone?  

There are many reasons. Maybe you would like to have someone check your e-mail when you are away from the office and contact you if something important comes in. Or you might need the information contained in one of your contacts while traveling, or want to know when you sent a particular e-mail.

To share access to your folders:

1. Display your folder list and right click on the folder you wish to share. Click Properties, select the Permissions tab, and the Properties box shown below will appear.

2. Click on Add and the Add Users dialog box will be displayed.

Only the users with accounts on the same exchange server will be listed. You cannot share information with people outside your network using this method.

3. Highlight the name of each of the users with which you want to share and click add. You will notice that, though this will add the users to the list, their role is “None”. (A role simply signifies the level of permission.)

4. To assign a role to a user, highlight the name and click the button next to “Roles” to open the “Roles” drop down list. (You can also click the option button next to each permission to set them individually.) If you want multiple users to have the same Role, you can select all of those users at one time, then select the desired role. 

5. There are nine available Roles, plus “Custom”. They range from None, which only makes the folder visible, all the way to Owner, which gives other users the same rights you have as the folder owner. 

There are some limitations to the use of permissions. You can share only six of the default Outlook folders: Calendar, Contacts, Inbox, Journal, Notes, and Tasks.

Now that someone has permission to access your folders, how do they do it? It is very easy in Outlook 2000:

1. Click on File>Open>Other Users Folder.

2. Select the name of the “other person” and the folder to which you have access.

3. The folder will then open in a new window.

4. If you have not been given access to a folder, the following message will appear:  

In other words, Outlook will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the folder! That’s all there is to it. 

Next month I will talk about creating delegates to access your Outlook information.

Parker Renaud is the one-man IT department at Colliers Keenan where he manages 90 PCs on 5 servers.