Hand over HOA or office email when a board member or manager changes

The problem

When board or manager email lives in someone’s personal Gmail, or in one person’s mailbox, it leaves with them. The next president starts with an empty inbox, vendors keep writing to the old address, and nobody can find last year’s contracts.

The fix: role addresses as shared mailboxes

Create addresses for the role, not the person, such as board@, president@, treasurer@ or manager@, as shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365.

• There’s no password to hand over. People open the shared mailbox with their own account.
• The history stays with the role when people change.
• A shared mailbox doesn’t need its own license for up to 50 GB of email. The people who use it each need their own licensed account.

Create a shared mailbox

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center (admin.microsoft.com) with your admin account.
2. Go to Teams & groups > Shared mailboxes and click Add a shared mailbox.
3. Enter a name (for example “HOA Board”) and the address (for example [email protected]), then click Save changes.
4. Under Next steps, click Add members to this mailbox and add the people who should see it.

The mailbox appears in each member’s Outlook on its own, usually within an hour.

Let people reply as the role

So replies come from board@ rather than the person’s own address:

1. In Teams & groups > Shared mailboxes, click the mailbox.
2. Under Mailbox permissions, open Send as and add the members.
3. In Outlook, they choose the role address in the From field when replying.

When someone leaves the role

1. Remove them from the shared mailbox’s members and Send as list.
2. Add the new person.
3. If the person who left had their own mailbox in your Microsoft 365, convert it to a shared mailbox so its history is kept (see Microsoft 365 admin: add staff, reset passwords and offboard).

Handover checklist

• Role addresses exist and are shared mailboxes, not personal accounts.
• New member added; old member removed, including Send as.
• Shared files moved to a folder or Team owned by the role, not the person.
• Passwords changed on any other accounts the old member used (bank portals, vendor sites).
• Bank, management company and key vendors told about the change.

Related

• IT for HOAs and gated communities
• IT for property management
• Microsoft 365 admin: add staff, reset passwords and offboard

More guides

• Microsoft 365 admin: add staff, reset passwords and offboard someone who leaves
• Microsoft 365 Copilot: what it does, where to find it, and how to use it safely
• Set up Microsoft Authenticator and Outlook on your phone (iPhone and Android)
• How to check your email's SPF, DKIM and DMARC records (and what the results mean)
• How to send an encrypted email in Outlook (Microsoft 365)
• What goes in a WISP: a checklist for small tax offices
• Share files with clients securely from OneDrive (expiring links, no attachments)
• How to spot and report a phishing email in Outlook

Microsoft changes its menus from time to time, so a button may have moved. These guides are general information for small businesses; check with your IT provider before changing settings that affect everyone.