This article applies to:
Exchange 2016, Exchange Online, Office 365
Let’s say you have a shared mailbox Marketing, used by the marketing department and you want to set an OOF message during holidays.
Setting an OOF message on a shared mailbox is actually possible, and you can achieve that by using PowerShell. Here is an command example:
Copy to Clipboard
You can also set additional options, for example exact time when the on will be turned on and turned off, to automatically refuse meeting requests during the period.
To get full details on possible use the following command:
Copy to Clipboard
In order to check what is actually set, use the Get- equivalent of the command:
Copy to Clipboard
CEO at Exchangemaster GmbH
Dejan Foro is founder and CEO of Exchangemaster GmbH.
He lives in Zurich, Switzerland and is a dedicated specialist, with 30 years of professional work experience in IT.
Before starting Exchangemaster GmbH he worked as a system engineer and project manager with customers of all sizes and across many industries: From small ISV startups and a NGO humanitarian organizations up to largest international corporations like Stryker, Swisscom, British Telecom and Nyrstar.
He spent his entire career delivering Microsoft based infrastructure solutions with main focus on Active Directory and Exchange. During those years, he collected a valuable work experience on 8 Exchange generations (2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, 2000 and 5.5) and has delivered services to a user base of more than 3.2 million mailboxes in on-premise, hybrid and Office 365 deployments.
Beside working on customer projects, he is a regular speaker and expert at Microsoft conferences and user groups. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer he also teaches Microsoft Official Curriculum courses to technical professionals around Europe.
For his work he has received numerous awards.
In 2005 he was the first member to be elected into the MCP Hall of Fame by Windows IT Pro Magazine readers choice (as 1 of 6 worldwide).
From 2005-2017, Dejan has been awarded by Microsoft Corporation with the yearly Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in area of Exchange for 12 years in a row (one of approximately 100 worldwide and, at the time, the only 1 such in Switzerland).
He lives in Zurich, Switzerland and is a dedicated specialist, with 30 years of professional work experience in IT.
Before starting Exchangemaster GmbH he worked as a system engineer and project manager with customers of all sizes and across many industries: From small ISV startups and a NGO humanitarian organizations up to largest international corporations like Stryker, Swisscom, British Telecom and Nyrstar.
He spent his entire career delivering Microsoft based infrastructure solutions with main focus on Active Directory and Exchange. During those years, he collected a valuable work experience on 8 Exchange generations (2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, 2000 and 5.5) and has delivered services to a user base of more than 3.2 million mailboxes in on-premise, hybrid and Office 365 deployments.
Beside working on customer projects, he is a regular speaker and expert at Microsoft conferences and user groups. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer he also teaches Microsoft Official Curriculum courses to technical professionals around Europe.
For his work he has received numerous awards.
In 2005 he was the first member to be elected into the MCP Hall of Fame by Windows IT Pro Magazine readers choice (as 1 of 6 worldwide).
From 2005-2017, Dejan has been awarded by Microsoft Corporation with the yearly Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in area of Exchange for 12 years in a row (one of approximately 100 worldwide and, at the time, the only 1 such in Switzerland).
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Why not using ECP as for any other mailbox? Impersonation and therefore setting OOF via ECP is also possible for shared mailboxes 😉 (just tested on our Exchange 2016 onpremise)
Thanks for your feedback, Peter. Yes, that is correct it can be done via ECP as well. The reason why it is done via PowerShell in this article is fairly simple: I had a customer who wanted to be able to that via a PowerShell script. Reason: They wanted to enable a secretary to activate OOF for people who call in sick, without giving her administrative access to Exchange. Solution was to provide her with a preformated csv file where she can enter people identities and the OOF message. From there, the values a picked up by a PowerShell script that is scheduled to run every 30 minutes and activates the OOF and sets the OOF message for those users. So I thought it might be useful to others to schowcase that it can be done via PowerShell and what commandlets to use.