Historically, Exchange has used a user’s primary SMTP address as the From address when sending messages. Other SMTP addresses assigned to a user (e.g., proxy addresses, also known as aliases) were ma...
Updated Oct 21, 2024
Version 11.0
Blog Post
It certainly wasn't working for the desktop version of Outlook on May 31, when I posted my original comment. I still have the emails from System Administrator rejecting the test emails in my deleted items folder.
However it appears to be working now with Version 2205 (the previously working version of the Current Channel before I had to suspend updates following this month's Feature Gate fiasco with Microsoft Access).
When I say "working", I mean behaving in the same limited way as for the Outlook in the Web client that I highlighted in my post of May 31. There is still no control of the display name for the message sent using the alias email address. This limitation is so severe that it makes the new feature quite unusable.
For example: My primary mail box has a display name of “Neil Sargent” and email address of mailto:neil@workdomain. If I want to send and receive email from my (virtual) technical support department, I can create an email alias on my mailbox called mailto:support@workdomain. But if I send an email from that alias (using the current version of Outlook for the Web or Outlook for Windows), the recipient receives and email from “Neil Sargent <support@workdomain>”. However I want them to see the email as coming from “Company Technical Support <support@workdomain>”.
There appears to be no way to set the display name for the sent email, it always uses the Display Name field from my mailbox. If I enter “Company Technical Support <support@workdomain>” in the From field, the entered display name is stripped and ignored. When I send the message, it uses the correct alias email but ignores my entered display name. The recipient subsequently receives a message from “Neil Sargent <support@workdomain>”.
Using the mail box’s Display Name is worse than using no display name at all, since it undermines my attempt to send an email under a different persona to my primary mail box – which was the whole point of sending from an alias in the first place.
We need to be able to define a Display Name for each alias email address defined. Alternatively we need the option of entering the required Display Name in the From field when composing the message. Ideally we would like both, with the mail box defining a default display name but with the option of a manual override in the From address.
Kind regards
Neil Sargent