These directions are based on what was sent to Tracy Callaghan on January 23, 2013 to help with the use of a common mailbox: sehsmail. It apparently worked for her. I was surprised there wasn't something similar already in the wiki. I have modified this to be more generic, since I have yet another user who will need to access a common department mailbox who could benefit from these directions.
This assumes that either Andy or I (or someone with rights) has granted full rights from one logon to the common mailbox account.
To log into it directly, the password was based on the date the account was created; I just verified that this works. In OWA, which you would need to go directly using a web browser to https://exchange.canisius.edu to get to the logon, use <mailbox> and the password format was in the original message.
From Outlook (the full client on your PC), in the left column where your folders are, eventually <mailbox> will show up below your folders. If you click on the black triangle next to your e-mail address to minimize your folders, the <mailbox> folder will show up & you can open by clicking on the clear triangle to expand it. This was just set up, so it may not appear for Outlook for you until you exit out of Outlook and get back into it later.
From Outlook ( on a mac) Use the following to permanently add a shared account. Adding a shared mailbox account in the instructions instead of adding the name of the person type in the name of the shared mailbox.
From OWA (the portal path to https://exchange.canisius.edu) if you normally use this, click in the upper right corner on your name and a dialog box should open saying Open Other Mailbox. In the Select mailbox: space in this dialog, type in <mailbox> (should start to fill in as you start to type), then click on Open. This gets you into that mailbox. To switch back to your own mail, then you click on <mailbox> in the upper right corner & start typing your e-mail until it fills in & click Open, which will return you to your own mailbox.
If other staff should need to have this access, let me know & I’ll add them in. Students cannot be set up this way since they use Google E-mail, but they can log into <mailbox> directly as the logon to OWA.
You may want to change the password from the original date-based password to something else – in which case you need to go to www.canisius.edu/passwordreset and use the <mailbox> logon to change the password to something different.
I hope this all makes sense. I first noted how to log into <mailbox> directly, then the Outlook and web OWA logons from your own logon.