Sending email as alias in office365?

[Brent Waldrop]

I used to have my domain email hosted in office 365. The reason i switched was because of a lack of a feature i really needed. You had the ability to create multiple aliases in office 365 so you could receive multiple emails for your domain in your inbox. For example say my domain was example.org. I could recieve emails from

bob@example.org <--primary email address

orders@example.org

newsletters@example.org.

the only big thing missing was that you could not "send" from any email other than the primary email. so in the example above i could not send email as orders@example.org or newsletters@example.org. I could only send email as bob@example.org. Is this still true or can you send email from aliases? I don't want it to look like it came from the primary email "orders@example.org in care of bob@example.org".  The email i send with an alias should really look like it came from the alias. This is the only reason i'm on GApps and i'm hope to swtich back. Is this feature still missing?

thanks

[#2]

FYI here for reference if I put To as the specified header name it works however when testing a reply email it does not match the rule but when creating a new email message it does. Here is a list of headers:

https://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/message-headers.xhtml

I tried In-Reply-To, Reply-To, and References with no luck. Regardless that is getting off topic but wanted to mention it in case someone else was wondering what to enter in the specified header field.

Back on topic I like they are looking to add the feature in OWA by the end of this year

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=59437

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-outlook-for-the-web-to-support-sending-ema...

All my users use the Outlook program but it is a start.

[#3]

That is good news.. MSFT certainly being more agile... i'm trying to use the shared mailbox function but i get "You do not have the permission to send the message on behalf of the specified user."  when i try to send from outlook... i wonder if it just takes time to propagate.. will try again next week

[#4]

@Brent Waldrop After bashing my head against the wall for a few hours and reading several documents that were absolutely no help whatsoever, I finally stumbled across I way to send external emails from a Shared Mailbox using OWA. I didn't expect it to work with aliases, but I tried it anyway, and it does not work.

To Send As a shared mailbox, open up the shared mailbox in a separate window after logging in to your primary email (make sure you have both Manage and Send permissions for the mailbox) using this URL: https://outlook.office.com/mail/sharedmailbox@mydomain.com/inbox

Replace sharedmailbox with the primary email of the shared mailbox. Replace mydomain.com with the domain. From here when you create a message it will show the shared mailbox by default in the From address and when you send messages externally they will in fact come from the shared mailbox email address.

Not a perfect solution by any means, but at least it works.

[#5]

@Joey Bergen thanks, these steps helped me to configure it for my case (had to use classic GUI of exchange admin to find the settings). To other office365 email addresses, this works, but to some other addresses it doesn't; "This message could not be sent. You do not have the permission to send the message on behalf of the specified user. " Thought it had to do with some delay in processing of the changes, but next day still have the issue. Or do I also need to have changes on the DNS level, for example to inform target mail servers to that my domain A is allowed to send messages of my domain B...? any ideas?

[#6]

I ran into a similar issue several years ago when i converted to using DistList as my conduit to setup other distinct email addresses to send and receive email .. i have multiple domains and want to be able to select specific email address to send as and for that to go as that email rather than my primary account email/domain

My recollection after adding this dist list for each separate email address .. Next outlook (windows desktop), make sure the from field exposed, click new email, click From .. at bottom of dropdown .. "other email address" ... my first instinct was to type in the email i setup on the DistList but when i sent this triggered error similar to what you report above, so solution after calls with Support was to just select directly from Global Address list .. once this is done it looks same as if you type it manually but the email goes without error. Once you get each email address setup in this fashion the UI in outlook remembers and you can select from the remembered emails in the dropdown. Again if you manually type in the email address it will also be remembered and fail to send each time. Just click and delete to remove then select directly from global address List per above.

Hope that helps.

[#7]

a separate issue is adding all the appropriate dkim, dmarc spf to your dns for each domain

[#8]

@userhtx and that is why i asked the question on the forum!!!! Thank you

[#9]

@userhtx wow... thanks for sharing your experiences, can confirm it also worked in my case! 

[#10]

ok so i can send out emails using the shared mailbox... what i haven't figured out is where the incoming mail goes... is there a way to set it so that it comes into my main inbox rather than a separate one?? sorry but need more help on this please

[#11]

@ab1234260 You can set up forwarding if you do not wish to receive emails in the shared mailbox. Go to the Exchange admin center and choose Recipients > Shared and then Edit the shared mailbox you want to set up forwarding for. Under Mailbox Features, scroll down to near the bottom, you'll see a section called Mail Flow. Click "View details" for the Delivery Options. Here you can designate a user mailbox to forward all emails sent to the shared mailbox.

[#12]

@userhtx Indeed, I have never had an issue using "Send As" with the full desktop Outlook application. In my experience, the issue described where using "Send As" shows the alternate From to other internal emails but will show your primary email and disregard the "Send As" when emails are sent externally only happens with OWA. Apparently, Microsoft has a fix for this on their roadmap. In the meantime, people who are unable/unwilling to use the desktop application can workaround the issue by opening the shared mailbox in a separate browser tab using the URL I linked above.

[#13]

i reported this several years ago. I had MULTIPLE sessions with O365 support on this issue. I had to walk them thru every step and they took screenshots at every step. I explained the fix / workaround i found. I asked them to report this internally as bug. My recollection and impression is this support engineer reproduced the problem on his system. With support online i added entirely new DL and reproduced the problem. It was several years back but another user just posted that the fix i suggested worked for them.

[#14]

Let me add another element of the retirement of the connected accounts is auto-populate the reply that populates the from field on an reply. Connected accounts had this feature. As i said MS retired the connected accounts a couple years ago. This forced me to shift my setup to manage my distinct email identities (different domains and funneling into one main account) via use of the DistList permissioned to send as ... but the Dist list approach did support auto-populate from on reply. For example, external sender sends to one of my identity email addresses i have setup in parallel using DistList .. such as name@domain2.com where name@domain1.com is my main account .. so from my inbox i would like to just open the email and click reply and the name@domain2.com would auto populate the from field .. instead with the DistList approach i have to manually set from by picking from dropdown every time .. with the former connected account this feature auto-populated the from field and i found that far more efficient and less subject to accidentally missing that selection which then sends out as the main name@domain1.com .. ie wrong identity.

Do you know if that config / feature has been added back?

[#15]

hi, ok yes i can send as... but as others have pointed out.. i want outlook to know that with certain users i want to use a different email.. this does autopopulate when i use a pop3 account to manage my email (which is what i was doing) but i'm now looking for all of my emails to be exchange accounts and the deskbound version of the software just doesn't support this properly.. as others have said i have to continually use the dropdown which is inconvenient.. i can forward the email to myself from the shared mailbox but that's not much use if, when i reply, it sends the email from my account... 

[#16]

@userhtx as it now works in the Outlook client on windows and also in OWA, in another case we're still not able to access this functionality (send as distribution list user) on the Mac with Outlook locally installed - do you know, is there a way to achieve that? 

[#17]

sorry i do not mess with macs

[#18]

Thanks James - I've been trying to work this out for hours then found your post!  Just a couple of questions to follow - is there a way to change the display name for the alias so it doesn't just show the email address as the name?  And can this also be set up on an iPhone to send from the alias?  Thanks again

[#19]

Hi all,

one solution that has occurred to me is to login to a shared mailbox via a pop3 account... i've tried this and it looks possible but i couldn't get the login to work... any thoughts? 

[#20]

There exists ChooseFrom cloud service that allows you to send as alias.

[#21]

@Victor IvanidzeIt is my understanding this is a 3rd party service that you would have to route your mail through and it is a paid service.

I have created an AutoIT script that helps automate setting up sending from an Alias account. If anyone shows any interest I can look at tweaking it for public use. At the moment it is customized for company use. Here is a screenshot:

After filling in the information when you click go AutoIT opens the mail config and enters the information based on what was entered. Also a mandatory signature gets created and there are steps along the way that still require manual intervention. Although if anyone with scripting/coding experience can lend a hand I think this would be a pretty neat tool until Microsoft natively implements the feature.