Powershell – Providing Read-only permissions to mailbox in Exchange 2010

exchange-2010permissionspowershell

I need to provide read access to a user in Exchange 2010. No matter how many different variances of the PowerShell I use I get a "Could not expand the folder" error in Outlook, and "Your mailbox appears to be unavailable…" error in OWA.

The following are the commands I have tried without luck – can anyone see the error in my logic?

add-mailboxfolderpermission -identity <user> -user <user2> -accessrights reviewer

add-mailboxfolderpermission -identity <user:\inbox> -user <user2> -accessrights reviewer

add-mailboxpermission -identity <user> -user <user2> -accessrights ReadPermission

add-mailboxpermission -identity <user> -user <user2> -accessrights ReadPermission -inheritancetype SelfandChild

and finally

ForEach ($f in (Get-MailboxFolderStatistics <user> | Where {($_.folderpath -notlike "/Conversation Action Settings") -and ($_.folderpath -notlike "/Quick Step Settings") -and ($_.folderpath -notlike "/Recoverable Items") -and ($_.folderpath -notlike "/Deletions") -and ($_.folderpath -notlike "/Purges") -and ($_.folderpath -notlike "/Versions") -and ($_.Folderpath -notlike "/Top of Information Store")})) {$fname = "<user>:" + $f.FolderPath.Replace("/","\"); Add-MailboxFolderPermission $fname -User <user2> -AccessRights Reviewer}

Can anyone see where I've gone wrong? This needs to be done with PowerShell and can't be done by providing FullAccess rigths and then providing permissions on a per-folder basis.

Best Answer

I don't see anything wrong with your logic (so I'm not sure about the Outlook piece), but you're going to have a problem with OWA, even if you do resolve that, because...

OWA requires Full Access rights to allow a user to access another user's mailbox.

Open another user's mailbox or a resource mailbox from Outlook Web App

You must have Full Access permission for the mailbox that you want to open to perform this procedure.

  1. Sign in to Outlook Web App.
  2. At the top of the Outlook Web App window, click the drop-down arrow next to your mailbox name, and then click the Open Other Mailbox window.
  3. Enter the name of the mailbox that you want to open, and then click Open.

So, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if OWA is a requirement, you won't be able to accomplish what you want without granting Full Access rights - sounds like you need to reconsider your requirements and/or approach.

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