After saying that the Graph didn’t offer much support for group mailboxes, I was promptly countered with an article explaining how to use the Exchange Import-Export API to access folders and items in group mailboxes that wasn’t limited to just the Inbox. Well, the good news is that the approach works, as seen in a complete script written to prove the case, but whether I would ever use this API for a purpose it was never designed for is quite another matter.
A reader asked why the Outlook Mail Graph API doesn’t support access to group mailboxes. The basic reason is that a group mailbox doesn’t have an account and the Outlook Mail API only supports mailboxes that are linked to an account. When you look at the current usage of group mailboxes, it doesn’t seem like there’s much data to mine. Maybe the need for Graph API support for group mailboxes isn’t such a big thing?
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (MDO) requires shared mailboxes to be licensed but doesn’t extend the same requirement to Microsoft 365 Groups. Given that Microsoft 365 Groups have group mailboxes and can function very much like shared mailboxes, the difference in licensing is remarkable. Why does this happen? It could be due to internal Microsoft politics, omissions, or just a preference for Groups. Who knows?
