Change a Mailbox Type in Office 365

In Office 365 (or Exchange for that matter) a mailbox can be of 4 distinct types and this article shows you how to change a mailbox type in Office 365.

Here are the 4 permitted types:

Regular – that is a normal mailbox that most users have for day to day email
Room – a mailbox that represents a room or location resource. This type of resource requires an AD account but is not available for interactive login unlike a regular mailbox.
Equipment – similar to a room mailbox except for items that are not in a fixed location – also not available for interactive login
Shared – a mailbox that’s not associated with a particulat user and is generally configured to allow access for multiple users.

To change the type you will need Powershell. Remember resource (room and equipment) mailboxes don’t use up Office 365 licenses so its worth doing.

So open up a Powershell window (if you don’t have it set up then read The Basics of Office 365 Powershell) and run the following commands to give you access to the full set of cmdlets:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
$LiveCred = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
Connect-MsolService
Import-Module Msonline

The Powershell command to change a mailbox type in Office 365

Once you have got through all that good stuff and entered you admin username and password you can actually do the deed.

Get-Mailbox -Identity room@mycompany.com | Set-Mailbox -Type Room

Replace Room with your chosen recipient type to change its function:

Regular
Room
Equipment
Shared

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