Exchange 2010: Log in to another user's mailbox with an admin user that does not have a mailbox

We have Exchange 2010 users that are part of the following Exchange groups:

  • Organization Management
  • Server Management

However, these accounts do not have Exchange mailboxes. We could log in to ECP and Exchange Management Console.

My question: How can we navigate to another user's mailbox using these accounts? Preferably, via OWA?

With accounts that do have mailboxes, we could just log in to the admin mailbox, click on the name associated to the mailbox in the upper right hand corner and use the Open other mailbox dialog.


Solution 1:

Assuming that the non-mailbox user (we'll call him "nomail_admin") has the appropriate permissions to a mailbox (we'll call him "some_mailbox"), nomail_admin can definitely use OWA to access the mailbox.

The necessary permissions can be granted through the Exchange Management Console or with this Exchange PowerShell command:

Add-MailboxPermission -Identity some_mailbox -User nomail_admin -AccessRights FullAccess

Once nomail_admin has access, he can go to https://your_owa_server/owa/[email protected]. He will be prompted for his nomail_admin credentials and then will be taken into some_mailbox's mailbox.

Note that even with "FullAccess" permissions, you will not be able to send as another user, unless you grant the SendAs AD permission:

Add-ADPermission -Identity some_mailbox -User nomail_admin -ExtendedRights Send-As