Looking for a definative answer to this after significant searching -I have a Windows 2003 network with Exchange 2003. Users have requested the following and I was wondering if this is possible or not.Users want to create a shared mailbox, e.g., sales@domain.com. Permissions would then be assigned to a group so that this box becomes accessible through their Outlook client. Any member of the group would be able to read incoming mail for this account and also send mail from the account on behalf of its address.Distribution groups are limiting because a single incoming email with a large attachment gets replicated across all the group member's mailboxes, adding to server load.I tried the Public folder method, but this doesn't seem to allow a "send on behalf of" the Public folder email address.If this is not workable with Exchange 2003, that's fine, I just need to be able to give them a definative yes or no. I seem to read on the web that the old solution to this in 2003 is to create a dummy AD user, give it an exchange account, then hand out the password to those needing access. If this is the only solution then I can work from there (not really an approved solution in my network environment though).Thanks in advance if you have any ideas on this.Lane

I would suggest creating the 'dummy' account and assigning it the desired email address, ensure it has a secure password (this can be anything random as we dont actually need to log in with the account, we just want the account to be secure). What you then want to do is assign full mailbox permissions to the users who need access to this account, this can be done in AD via the Users and Computers snap-in. In ADUC select the dummy user and go into the Exchange Advanced tab and select Mailbox Permissions, add the user you want to grant permissions to and then give them the Full Mailbox Access permission. This will allow them to add the mailbox into their Outlook profile (edit the profile and then under the More Settings > Advanced menu you can add additional mailboxes - in this case you would add the dummy account), this will then show up in the users Outlook as a second Mailbox - dummy account name in the left hand pane. One thing to note is that granting Full Mailbox Access *wont* by default allow those users to send emails or reply back as the email address associated with the dummy account, to allow this the users need an additional 'send-as' permission. To grant this edit the dummy account, and go to the Security tab (if you dont see this tab then you need to enable Advanced Features from the View menu), add the user(s) who need send-as permissions and then if you scroll down the list of available permissions you will see the 'Send-As' option. If you expect to be granting permissions to a number of users you may find it easier to manage by creating a security group to manage them and assigning the permissions to the group rather than the users, that way if you need to add/remove permissions from a user it is as simple of editing the group rather than digging through ADUC to set/remove the permissions.My blog: http://www.monkeydust.net | Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MrYiff

Agree with above. The message will only be stored once per message store. This is Single Instance Storage. If you have 2 messages stores total, the message will only be stored at most twice.Mark Morowczynski|MCT| MCSE 2003:Messaging, Security|MCITP:EMA 2K7,EDA Win 7,ES,SA,EA|MCTS:Windows Mobile Admin|Security+|http://almostdailytech.com

Gents,I tried out the above and it was exactly what I was looking for.Thanks for all your great advice, I really appreciate your help.Lane

Hi,Make up information:In fact, you don't need to worry about server load if all member's mailboxes located in the same store. As Mark said, the store is Single Instance Storage and was structed in into various tables which are linked to each other. If one message sent to this group, only one message exists in the store. Outlook has the pointer to locate this message.Exchange single-instance storage and its effect on stores when moving mailboxeshttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/175481ThanksAllen