Accessing E-Mail on SharePoint

The icon for e-mail messages stored on SharePoint.

E-mail messages stored on SharePoint can be listed and opened both in Lotus Notes and in the Web browser. You can identify e-mail messages stored on SharePoint by the envelope icon.

Accessing shared e-mail from Lotus Notes

With Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator, Lotus Notes users can open e-mail messages stored on SharePoint in .eml file format. Double-clicking the message in the sidebar panel opens the message in a Lotus Notes e-mail message tab, from where you can perform all standard e-mail operations, such as forwarding the message.

If the document library is set up with support for e-mail header mapping, you can configure the visible columns in the document list to show e-mail specific fields such as From, To, Date, Subject, etc. The document library can be configured with an e-mail view to filter the document list to show only e-mail messages, and display e-mail headers as columns, similar to a mail Inbox.

Accessing shared e-mail from a Web browser

SharePoint users who are not using Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator and Lotus Notes can still view the saved e-mail messages from SharePoint's standard Web interface. Microsoft Internet Explorer renders the e-mail messages, with internal links to the original attachments, in an HTML view.

Notes:

  • SharePoint 2010 changed the security settings for opening EML files in Internet Explorer. To open EML files in the browser, the SharePoint administrator needs to first set Browser File Handling to permissive.
  • Mozilla Firefox does not currently support opening .eml files, and will instead use the associated program to open the file (typically Outlook Express or Windows Mail). If you want to open .eml files in Firefox, you can install the IETab add-on.
  • Opening attachment links to file types that are not supported by Internet Explorer (e.g. compressed archives), prompts you with a File Download – Security Warning dialog to save the attachment as a temporary file. You will need to rename the downloaded file to the original file extension before you can open it.

The HTML view of an e-mail message stored in SharePoint and opened in Internet Explorer.

SharePoint document libraries display all documents, including uploaded e-mail messages. The document library can be configured with an E-mail View to filter the document list to show only e-mail messages, and display e-mail headers as columns, similar to a mail Inbox.

The view of SharePoint’s Web interface configured to display e-mail messages similar to a mail Inbox.