Microsoft: Configure email forwarding in Microsoft 365

Microsoft: Configure email forwarding in Microsoft 365

As the admin of an organization, you might have company requirements to set up email forwarding for a user's mailbox. Email forwarding lets you forward email messages sent to a user's mailbox to another user's mailbox inside or outside of your organization.

 Important

You can use outbound spam filter policies to control automatic forwarding to external recipients. For more information, see Control automatic external email forwarding in Microsoft 365.

 Tip

If you need help with the steps in this topic, consider working with a Microsoft small business specialist. With Business Assist, you and your employees get around-the-clock access to small business specialists as you grow your business, from onboarding to everyday use.

Configure email forwarding

Before you set up email forwarding, note the following:

  • Allow automatically forwarded messages to be sent to people on the remote domain. See Manage remote domains for details.

  • Once you set up email forwarding, only new emails sent to the from mailbox will be forwarded.

  • Email forwarding requires that the from account has a license. If you're setting up email forwarding because the user has left your organization, another option is to convert their mailbox to a shared mailbox. This way several people can access it. However, a shared mailbox cannot exceed 50GB.

You must be an Exchange administrator or Global administrator in Microsoft 365 to do these steps. For more information, see the topic About admin roles.

  1. In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.

  2. Select the name of the user whose email you want to forward, then open the properties page.

  3. On the Mail tab, select Manage email forwarding.

  4. On the email forwarding page, select Forward all emails sent to this mailbox, enter the forwarding address, and choose whether you want to keep a copy of forwarded emails. If you don't see this option, make sure a license is assigned to the user account. Select Save changes.

    To forward to multiple email addresses, you can ask the user to set up a rule in Outlook to forward to the addresses.

    1. Open outlook > Home > Rules > Select Manage Rules & Alerts
    2. Select New Rule > Select Apply rule on message I receive located near bottom of list, then click Next.
    3. Click Yes when asked This rule will be applied to every message you receive.
    4. On the next list select the actions redirect it to people or public group and stop processing more rules
    5. Click the underlined phrase people or public group in the bottom part of window.
    6. Type the email address to forward mail to in the To field, then click OK.
    7. Select Finish

    Or, in the admin center, create a distribution group, add the addresses to it, and then set up forwarding to point to the DL using the instructions in this article.

  5. Don't delete the account of the user who's email you're forwarding or remove their license! If you do, email forwarding will stop.


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