OpenAI documents shared and delegated mailbox support subject to account permissions, Microsoft Entra consent, workspace settings, and enabled app capabilities. ChatGPT does not grant the underlying Microsoft sharing permissions. Outlook Email and Calendar apps, checked October 24, 2026.
Establish a known message in the intended mailbox
Open the shared mailbox directly in Outlook using the Microsoft account you intend to connect. Find one message you are allowed to use and record its mailbox address, sender, distinctive subject words, and date. Keep sensitive contents out of a support report unless they are needed and permitted.
For this authored example, operations@example.com is a fictional shared mailbox. Your own mailbox contains an older forwarded copy of “Room access change,” but the shared mailbox contains the later correction. Finding the forwarded copy does not answer what the operations mailbox currently says.
If you cannot open the shared mailbox in Outlook, resolve that access with its owner or Microsoft administrator first. Reconnecting ChatGPT cannot create missing delegation rights.
Ask for one exact source before a summary
Use the Outlook Email app in the correct ChatGPT workspace. Confirm the connected Microsoft account, then request the known message:
Use Outlook Email with connected Microsoft account [ACCOUNT].
Target the shared/delegated mailbox [EXACT MAILBOX ADDRESS],
not my personal mailbox.
Read only. Find the message from [SENDER] with subject words
[DISTINCTIVE WORDS], dated between [START] and [END].
Return the mailbox searched, subject, sender, recipients, timestamp,
source reference and relevant plain-text passage.
If the shared mailbox is unavailable, say so explicitly. Do not
substitute a forwarded copy from my own mailbox. Do not infer that
the message does not exist from a failed or incomplete search.
Do not change contacts, messages, folders or calendar events.
The app supports message metadata, plain-text bodies, and structured sender, subject, and date searches. Check the returned message against the one you opened in Outlook. A title match alone is insufficient when a correction follows the original instruction. Search capabilities
Separate the four reasons a result may be missing
| Observation | Next check |
|---|---|
| Shared mailbox unavailable in Outlook itself | Underlying Microsoft access or delegation |
| Your own mailbox searched instead | Exact shared mailbox address and selected connected account |
| App reports missing permission or admin consent | Required Microsoft Entra consent and the workspace's enabled actions |
| Known message remains excluded despite correct access | Workspace search restrictions, including configured sensitivity-label exclusions |
Enterprise administrators can exclude email carrying specified sensitivity labels; attachments to excluded messages are also excluded. Treat a protected message as unavailable through this route. Do not remove its label or copy its contents elsewhere just to make it searchable. Sensitivity-label restrictions
Microsoft permission consent and ChatGPT action enablement are separate controls. If an administrator reviews the permissions, an item marked Upcoming is not proof that its action is available today. Ask them to check the actual enabled capability for this workspace and mailbox.
Report the failed step precisely
Give support or the relevant administrator the ChatGPT workspace, connected account, target mailbox address, date range, exact error, and whether the same account can open the message in Outlook. Use a non-sensitive test subject when possible. This identifies the failed access step without sending passwords, tokens, or an entire customer thread.
For a general installation or connection problem, ChatGPT apps setup covers the wider sequence. Once the known-message test succeeds, broaden the request to the later correction and check its source. Keep “not found in this search” separate from “no correction was sent.”