Exchange Online

Exchange Online manages mail in the customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant.

Not the same product as Exchange

Exchange is hosted on-premises Exchange Server, running on the operator’s infrastructure through a different provider. The two menu groups sit next to each other with near-identical screen names, and a procedure written for one will not work on the other.

MailboxesThe mailbox list and every tab of the mailbox editor.

RecipientsContacts, distribution lists, dynamic lists and mail-enabled security groups.

Transport and journaling rulesOrganization-wide mail flow, per-mailbox rules and compliance journaling.

Retention and storageRetention policies and tags, and where mailbox storage is going.

Disclaimers and signaturesAppended disclaimers and centrally managed signatures.

Why the Exchange Online menu is missing or nearly empty

Three conditions decide what appears, and the read-only case has two distinct outcomes that look like faults but are not.

A read-only tenant application removes almost everything

Where the organization’s tenant application has read-only permissions:

• With user-management permission, the menu is trimmed to Email Signature Management alone. Every other screen disappears.
• Without it, the entire Exchange Online menu disappears — there is no group at all.

Both are correct behaviour, not a fault. Exchange Online management is almost entirely writes to the tenant, so a read-only application has nothing to offer. Check the tenant application’s permission scope before investigating anything else.

The other two conditions:

Requirement	If missing
Microsoft Online Services in the hosting plan	No menu
At least one user licensed for Exchange Online	No menu

The licence check is easy to misread: the menu appears once somebody is licensed, so an organization that has bought Exchange Online but not yet assigned it looks identical to one that has not bought it.

Related

• Exchange (on-premises) — the other mail product
• Accounts, roles and what you can see
• Microsoft 365 — tenant configuration and licensing