Classic Outlook "EMAIL FORWARDING IS ON" bar: how to keep forwarding and remove the bar

Since around August 2026, classic Outlook (Microsoft 365) has shown a brown bar across the message list: "EMAIL FORWARDING IS ON — You are forwarding your email to …" with a Manage Rules button. There's no setting or registry key to dismiss it. The usual advice is to turn the forwarding off, which doesn't help if the forwarding is deliberate. This behavior disappeared for a while but has recently returned.

I have several Inbox rules that forward mail from specific senders to a family member. They have to run server-side, because some must work while my PC is off, and I need to keep my own copy.

Here's what I tried:

- Change the rules to "on this computer only":      bar stays
- Change the rules from Forward to Redirect:        bar stays
- Disable the forwarding rules:      bar goes, but so does the forwarding
- Replace the Inbox rules with an 
       Exchange mail flow (transport) rule:     
                  !!! bar goes, forwarding still works !!!

The bar appears for any Inbox rule that forwards or redirects mail. A mail flow rule runs in Exchange Online before the message reaches my mailbox, and the bar trigger apparently doesn't look at it.

Requirement: you need Exchange admin rights on your Microsoft 365 tenant. That's typically the case for small-business or custom-domain subscriptions where you're the admin. Home and Outlook.com accounts don't have mail flow rules.

Steps (Exchange Online PowerShell)

1. Connect:

Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName <your-address>

2. List your forwarding rules and their conditions:

Get-InboxRule | ? {$_.ForwardTo -or $_.RedirectTo -or $_.ForwardAsAttachmentTo} | fl Name,Enabled,From,FromAddressContainsWords,SubjectContainsWords,RedirectTo,ForwardTo

3. Create one mail flow rule that covers them. Here the conditions are by sender, using regex patterns, and all patterns in the list are OR'd:

New-TransportRule -Name 'Copy to Family' `
  -SentTo '<your-address>'
  -FromAddressMatchesPatterns '@sender1\.com$','^alerts@sender2\.com$' `
  -BlindCopyTo '<recipient-address>'

   -SentTo limits the rule to mail addressed to you. -BlindCopyTo delivers a copy that shows the original sender, like a redirect, and you keep the original. The Exchange admin center also has a GUI for this, under Mail flow → Rules.

4. Check the rule order:

Get-TransportRule | ft Name,Priority,State,StopRuleProcessing

If an existing rule above yours has StopRuleProcessing = True, yours will never run. A common example is a "bypass spam filtering" rule with no conditions. New rules are added at the bottom, so move yours up:

Set-TransportRule 'Copy to Family' -Priority 0

5. Wait up to 30 minutes. A new or changed mail flow rule doesn't take effect right away. Then test by adding a temporary sender pattern, such as a personal address you can send from, and check the trace:

Get-MessageTraceV2 -RecipientAddress '<recipient-address>' -StartDate (Get-Date).AddHours(-1) -EndDate (Get-Date) | ft Received,SenderAddress,Subject,Status

-EndDate is required whenever you use -StartDate. Times are shown in UTC. Remove the test pattern afterwards with Set-TransportRule … -FromAddressMatchesPatterns ….

6. In classic Outlook, go to File → Manage Rules & Alerts, untick the old forwarding/redirect rules, click Apply, and restart Outlook.

After the above, the bar was gone, the forwarding kept working, and my other rules, including "run a script" rules, were not affected.

Tips

- Before you change anything, back up your rules: Manage Rules & Alerts → Options → Export Rules.

- Edit the Inbox rules in classic Outlook rather than Outlook on the web or PowerShell. Editing them elsewhere can remove client-only rules.

- From now on, add or remove senders on the mail flow rule. Any new forwarding or redirect Inbox rule brings the bar back.