Frequently Asked Question

Option 1: Use "View on Server"

Depending upon your version of Outlook, you may have an option to view all emails by directly accessing the online server mailbox (only applies to locally cached mailboxes):

1. In the Outlook ribbon menu, select Folder 
2. Click on the "View on Server" button
3. 

Option 2: Increase the Number of Years of Locally Displayed Email

Outlook on your Desktop caches (keeps a local copy of) 12 months of emails by default to reduce disk space used on your device and to keep Outlook nice and responsive.

NOTE: the following will apply to all mailboxes related to that Exchange/MS 365 account. If you have caching enabled for Shared mailboxes, it can start to eat up disk space and make Outlook a bit less responsive as it creates indexes for all synchronised items and has more data to handle. 

Check the notes in Turning Off Caching for Shared Mailboxes further down this article, so you can increase the amount of email for your own Mailbox without consuming disk space for Shared mailbox data.

1. Open the Outlook app on your PC
2. In the top ribbon menu, select File
3. Select Account Settings
4. Select Account Name and Sync Settings:
5. 
6. Move the slider for the amount of email you wish to cache locally
7. Click "More Settings"
8. Select the Advanced tab
9. Tick the box "Download shared folders"
10. Click OK 
11. 
12. Click Next on the "Exchange Account Settings" window
13. Click Done 
14. Restart Outlook 
15. You will see an "Updating (name of folder)" message in the Outlook status bar in right of the bottom frame of Outlook.
16. Outlook searches work best once the folders are indexed, and it will take some time to download and then index the contents of the additional email.

Turning Off Caching for Shared Mailboxes (Recommended)

Having caching turned off for Shared mailboxes means you can see all the email in the mailbox, but the mailbox may be less responsive because it has to fetch and display the data from the server each time you visit the mailbox and its folders.

To turn OFF caching for Shared mailboxes, follow the above but un-tick the box "Download shared folders" in step 9 of Option 2 above.

Option 3: Use "Outlook on the Web"

1. Sign in to https://outlook.office365.com to see all email in the web version of Outlook.
2. To do this for Shared mailboxes, follow the instructions here: Email - Shared Mailbox - How to Open an Office 365 Shared mailbox in webmail (OWA)