How to Enable External Forwarding in Office 365?

By default, external email forwarding in Office 365 is disabled. If you want to enable it, follow the methods explained in this article. to easily enable external forwarding in Office 365.

For the past years, Microsoft 365 has become the backbone of business productivity. Tools like Outlook, Teams, and Exchange Online make the process easier. Among them, the program offers you an email forwarding function, which allows you to do smooth communications and easily share from outside of the organization.

External email forwarding function that allows you to automatically redirect your incoming emais from the user’s Microsoft 365 mailbox to any external email address, like Gmail, Yahoo, or any corporate account. This option makes it easier for you to communicate with external people.

However, because of data security, external forwarding by default is disabled. To enable it, I am going to share with you the methods that can help you.

Note: Before going through the procedure, I want to clear the difference between Internal and external forwarding. Although it is a simple concept, some users do not know about it. So, internal forwarding in Microsoft 365 means forwarding of your email or data within the same organization or domain. But external forwarding refers to sending your emails to addresses that are outside of the organization’s domain.

So, when a user has to forward Office 365 mailbox to multiple user within the Office 365 environment. They use internal forwarding. External forwarding is used when the user sends it to another email account, like Gmail, Thunderbird, etc.

Change Anti Spam Policy in Office 365

To allow external forwarding, you have to first change the anti-spam policy. Then, you can enable it by going through the methods that I explained below. To change the anti-spam policy, follow the steps below.

1. Log in to the Office 365 admin center and go to the Microsoft Defender portal.
2. Click on the Email and Collaboration option.
3. Select the Policies & Rules. Then, the Threat policies option.
4. Click on the Anti-spam button and click on the Edit policy button.
5. Modify the changes you want, choose who the policy applies to, and set the priority.
6. After changing the settings, click on the Save button.

After editing the anti-spam policy, let’s see how you can enable the external forwarding.

Enable External Forwarding in Office 365 using EAC

From the Exchange Admin Center, you can allow external forwarding in Microsoft 365, and you can sync it with a user.

1. First, you must sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center using Global Admin or Exchange Admin credentials.
2. From the left panel, click on the Show all option and then the Exchange option.
3. In the Exchange Admin Center, click on the Mail flow option and then the Rules button.
4. Go to the Security & Compliance Center, then Policies & rules.
5. Click on the Threat policies button. Under the Anti-spam policies, choose the Default policy.
6. From the Automatic forwarding rules, change it from Automatic System Controlled (default) to On-Forwarding is enabled.
7. Press the Save button. After enabling the forwarding, now set this feature for the user.
8. Go to the Exchange Admin Center, click on Recipients, and then the Mailboxes option.
9. Choose a mailbox that you want to enable forwarding for and click Mail flow Settings.
10. Hit the Manage mail forwarding button and enable forwarding.
11. Provide the external email address and choose whether you want to keep a copy in the mailbox or not.
12. Lastly, save the changes that you have made.

Allow Office 365 External Forwarding by PowerShell

PowerShell can also help you enable external forwarding. But, for this, you must know about the PowerShell commands, and you should have the admin credentials of the Office 365.

1. Run Windows PowerShell as Administrator and connect to Exchange Online: Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName [email protected].
2. First, I have to allow spam filter policy from these commands: Get-HostedOutboundSpamFilterPolicy | FL Name,AutoForwardingMode
   Set-HostedOutboundSpamFilterPolicy -Identity “Default” -AutoForwardingMode On
   (set value for -AutoForwardingMode On to allow automatic external forwarding)
3. Configure the forwarding for a specific mailbox: Set-Mailbox -Identity “[email protected]” -ForwardingSMTPAddress “[email protected]” -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true (-ForwardingSMTPAddress means the external address where you want emails to be forwarded, -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true means keep a copy in the original mailbox)

These are the two ways to enable external forwarding in Office 365. I have explained them in simple steps to help you allow the forwarding. But it also creates challenges in compliance and data governance for the organization. For this, it is better to take a preventive step while you are forwarding your emails.

Preventive Step Before Enabling Forwarding Option

When you are forwarding your emails to an external account, the standard archiving and retention policy does not apply. That’s why, to protect your data from any compliance risks, backing up your data is the best. SysTools Office 365 Backup Tool is a professional software that can easily store your entire mailbox without any issues. Therefore, first take a backup of the file and then move it, and then allow the external forwarding option. By doing this, you can safeguard your data from any incidents.

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Concluding Words

Many users don’t know that, by default, external forwarding is disabled in Office 365. Thus, in this article, I have explained how you can easily enable external forwarding in Office 365. Here, I have explained two methods to allow forwarding and then provide a preventive way to protect your emails.