How to add another mailbox to your Outlook client

It might so happen that you might have to access another person's email for a number of reasons, or you have a generic common mailbox (say enquiries@yourcompany.com) which you are required to monitor and respond. The easiest way is to configure that person's mailbox in another profile and open your MS Outlook client using that profile. But then that limits your ability to access your own email and it quickly becomes a pain to close and re-open Outlook in different profiles. You might also use another computer to access the other mailbox, but then that is also tedious and a less than elegant / efficient solution. What you really want to do is to open the other mailbox right from within your mailbox and keep it open. Fortunately Microsoft Exchange and Outlook provides such capability.

To add another mailbox to your profile, click on Tools --> Email Accounts (Account settings if you are using Office 2007). In the resulting window that pops up ensure that View or change existing email accounts is selected and then click Next.

In the next window where you see Microsoft Exchange Server, ensure that the Microsoft Exchange Server is selected / highlighted and click on Change. In the next window, click on More settings. In the resulting pop-up window that appears, click on Advanced tab and then click on add. In the next window, enter the user's name and then click OK. You should now see the account name in the previous window. Click OK your way out and you now should see the new mailbox below your regular mailbox.

Note: For this to work, your email administrator must have granted read access to you on the destination mailbox. If not, although you will be able to add a mailbox, you won't be able to access it and get a failure warning.