How to reply to emails in partner's Outlook inbox?

I'd like to know if there's a way for me via our network to access and reply to email that's been downloaded from the ISP server to my business partner's Outlook inbox.

I know I could remotely connect to his computer but this isn't practical. I could also have his Outlook set to leave the emails on the server so I can login to Webmail and reply, however, this isn't an ideal solution either.

I have been looking into a hosted exchange solution as I have been told you can share calenders and folders. Would this allow me to access email in his Outlook and reply to it?

If you know of any other solution, please let me know.

Cheers,
Jack

Auto-forward all his email to you?

Hi,

Sure that would work but my goal is to make it look like HE replied to the email.

The long-term goal is for me to take responsibility of his email communication without him being out of the loop. He needs to see that an email came in at this time and was replied to at that time, and be able to access the replies too.

A quick and dirty solution would be to have his email forwarded to me (or download it off the server first) and CC my reply to him, which would also mean me recieving the reply also. But I'm looking for a less messy approach.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Jack

I'm in the same position as you, except my "partner" is me at work, and I'm me at home. All my work email is auto-forwarded to me at home (with one exception which I'll come to) where a filter directs it to my work identity at home (I use Thunderbird), from which all replies have "reply to" set to my work email address. The only thing I have to remember is to bcc my replies from home to my work email.

The one exception to the auto forwarding at work is these bcc'd emails from me at home, which a filter moves to a "sent as" box on my work email instead of auto forwarding to my home.

It might sound messy to you but it took all of 5 minutes to set up and works perfectly! All my work mail, with replies, are there on the works server as though I had done them from work, but all are dealt with by me at home with virtually no extra effort.

Edited to say yes, if you share a server, Outlook will enable sharing of folders exactly as you would like to do.

Edited by deleted (Mon 21-May-07 08:34:09)

IMAP is a lot better at this, as the mail stays on the ISP server and you can access it with your mail client from anywhere. So you would just connect to the IMAP server and do the business and when the partner did the same it would all be evident in the same folders. This also leaves the data on a managed server rather than on a PC which may or may not be backed up.

1&1 do IMAP email hosting, to name but one.

In reply to:

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if you share a server, Outlook will enable sharing of folders exactly as you would like to do.

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And don't forget that delegate permissions need to be set up if you want to reply as your partner.

Do you really mean Outlook? Or Outlook Express. The answer isn't going to be the same.