Does Microsoft 365 Copilot (Chat or Outlook) include archive mailbox data when working with Shared Mailboxes?

Hello @Susanne Duckhorn

May I confirm that you’re referring to Copilot Chat / Copilot in Outlook for shared mailboxes?

If yes, I did a quick test in my environment using a shared mailbox with an Exchange Online Plan 2 license. When searching for emails in the Online Archive, for example: “Search my shared mailboxes and summarize emails mentioning ABC” Copilot does not return results from the archive.

However, I noticed that if you use prompts like:

• “Search my shared mailboxes online archive and summarize emails mentioning ABC”
• “Summarize recent emails in <shared mailbox email> mailbox”

then the results may include emails from the Online Archive folder.

So I think the key point here is that you need to explicitly point Copilot to the mailbox (which includes all folders), or even to the specific archive context, for it to return the expected results.

However, this is only based on my own testing and observations. I’d recommend testing these prompts in your own environment to confirm whether the behavior matches your scenario and meets your requirements, then sharing your findings back here.

For reference, you can check: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/use-copilot-in-shared-mailboxes-and-delegate-mailboxes

Looking forward to your reply.

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