If your manager has granted you delegate access, you have the ability to act “on behalf of” them. (It may not be your manager, but to keep things simple, we’ll pretend that it is.) Depending on exactly how much access they’ve given you, you may be able to respond to meeting requests, send out meeting invitations, and handle their email messages.

Respond to Meeting Requests on Behalf of Your Manager

If your manager has giving you Delegate Access to their calendar, they can also choose to have you receive copies of emails inviting them to meetings, and messages responding to meeting invitations created by your manager (or by you on their behalf).

You can respond to these messages in exactly the same way you would respond to an invitation sent to you.

Create Meeting Requests on Behalf of Your Manager

If your manager has given you Delegate Access to their calendar, you can send out meeting requests on their behalf. This is just like creating a meeting request coming from you with one critically important difference. You must be viewing your manager’s calendar in order for the meeting request to appear to come from them rather than you.

If you have more than one calendar open (many people leave both their own calendar and their manager’s calendar), click anywhere in your manager’s calendar before creating the meeting request.

Notice that in the Scheduling Assistant, your name will not appear. Instead, your manager’s name is included, which is what you want.

Create an Email Message on Behalf of Your Manager

If your manager has giving you Delegate Access to their Inbox at the Author or Editor level, you can send, receive, and reply to email messages on their behalf. This is just like working with your own email messages with two critically important differences.

• To view or respond to their messages, you must be viewing their Inbox or other folder, not your own.
• While composing the message, you must set the From field to their name rather than yours. The From field will then display their name, but the person receiving the message will see “Joe Assistant on behalf of Ms. Manager” in the From field, with real names, of course. Some mail clients (like Gmail, for example) will not show “on behalf of.” In this example, the recipient would just see that the message came from Ms. Manager.

When you reply to a message on their behalf, the From field is automatically set.

Save Sent Items in Another Person’s Sent Items Folder

When email messages and meeting requests are sent by a delegate on behalf of a manager, a copy of each item is saved in the delegate’s Sent Items folder only.

In order to save copies of these outgoing items where the manager can see them, the manager must grant the delegate access to his or her Sent Items folder.

The manager must use the instructions below for their version of Outlook. 

The next time the delegate starts Outlook, the manager’s Sent Items folder will be visible.

The delegate can then put outgoing items in the manager’s Sent Items folder by dragging-and-dropping the messages. The result of this method is a copy in both places. Of course, you can delete the copy in your folder if you like.

Outlook for Windows Instructions

1. In the Mail section of the Navigation Pane, right-click the Sent Items folder. (Make sure you select the Sent Items folder associated with the account that you’ve delegated.)
2. Select Properties from the dropdown menu. A Sent Items Properties dialog box will open.
3. Click the Permissions tab.
4. If you see the name of the delegate on the Permissions tab, skip to step 8.
5. Click Add.
6. Type all or part of the delegate’s name in the search field. Search results will be displayed as you type.
7. Click on the name of the delegate,  click Add, then click OK.
8. Make sure the delegate’s name is selected in the Sent Items Properties dialog box.
9. From the Permission Level dropdown list, select Contributor.
10. Click OK.

Outlook for Mac Instructions

1. In the Mail section of the Navigation Pane, right-click (or ctrl-click) the Sent Items older. (Make sure you select the Sent Items folder associated with the account that you've delegated.)
2. Select Sharing Permissions from the drop-down menu.
3. If you see the name of the delegate on the Permissions tab, skip to step 7.
4. Click Add User.
5. Type all or part of the delegate’s name in the text field then click Find. If Outlook does not find an exact match, it will show you possible matches.
6. Click on the name of the delegate, then click OK.
7. Make sure the delegate’s name is selected in the Folder Properties dialog box.
8. From the Permission Level dropdown list, select Contributor.
9. Click OK.