Generic email accounts in outlook

[Eng mona]

Can someone advise on the attahced matter, please?

I will try my best to explain the error encountered as much as possible.

Note: All users are using Outlook, a business account on Windows 11.

Many thanks in advance for any help.

[HansV]

Try the following both as a user who can perform mail merges, and as a user who can't.
In Outlook, select File > Account Settings > Account Settings...
Activate the Data Files tab.
You should see the .ost (and perhaps .pst) files associated with the accounts.
Do you notice a difference?

[Eng mona]

For both users, I was able to see ost and nst files associated to each account they have in their list. I didn't really find any difference.

[HansV]

Aww, I'm stumped...

[Eng mona]

And the weridiest part is, this problem is intermittent. as in some time the accounts are working for both users and sometimes they are not. so I really cant figure out the root cause for this?

[Eng mona]

I have tried to run the same mail merge now for 2 other different users, and I have noticed something different.
(now I have 3 colleagues in the team who have the same generic email added to their accounts list, 2 of them were able to do the mail merge by changing their default account, while the third user couldn't.)

I have attached the error, and in the data file location, I have noticed that the user who couldn't do the mailmerge had some XML files created, while the other user who was able to do the mailmerge didn't have any of these XML reference files.

Would that help to figure out the problem?

[HansV]

I don't think those are relevant to the problem, but I'm out of my depth here...

[kdock]

Have you tried setting up delegate access for each of the generic accounts? If you set up "Send As" rather than "Send on Behalf Of" it should look as if the generic account sent it. Make each person who does the mail merge a delegate of each of the generic addresses. It seems to me each GA would have to grant both mail and contact full permissions.

**Disclaimer** I'm not currently capable of testing this, so I can't guarantee it will work. But it might be worth a try setting up two delegates for one of your GAs. Choose two people for whom the your current process hasn't worked.

The reason it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't may have to do with permissions, files open by another user, colliding requests, etc.

Just a thought... Kim

[Eng mona]

Thank you, HansV and kdock.

I have 4 staff members on the team, and the 4 of them have full access to the GA :( All of them "send as" and not "send on behalf of".

I am not quite sure of the type of permissions, but I might check this suggestion with the IT team.