Applies to: Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Online

Topic Last Modified: 2012-11-14

This topic explains how to use the EAC or the Shell to configure mail forwarding for a mailbox. Mail forwarding allows you to configure a mailbox to forward email messages sent to the user to another recipient.

Important:
If you use the EAC to configure mail forwarding, incoming messages will only be forwarded to the other mailbox; copies won't be retained in the user's mailbox. If you want copies of incoming messages to be retained in the mailbox and also forwarded to another address, you have to use the Shell and set the DeliverToMailboxAndForward parameter to $true when using the Set-Mailbox cmdlet.

For additional management tasks related to user mailboxes, see Manage User Mailboxes.

Note:
You can also configure mail forwarding for shared mailboxes.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete: 2 minutes.

  • You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Recipient Provisioning Permissions" entry in the Recipients Permissions topic.

  • For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard Shortcuts in the Exchange Admin Center.

Tip:
Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at: Exchange Server, Exchange Online, or Exchange Online Protection.

What do you want to do?

Use the EAC to configure mail forwarding

  1. In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes.

  2. In the list of user mailboxes, click the mailbox that you want to configure mail forwarding for, and then click Edit Edit Icon.

  3. On the mailbox properties page, click Mailbox Features.

  4. Under Delivery Options, click View details to view or change the setting to forward email messages sent to the user to another recipient.

    Note:
    On this page, you can also set the maximum number of recipients that the user can send a message to. For on-premises Exchange organizations, the recipient limit is unlimited. For Exchange Online organizations, the limit is 500 recipients.
  5. Select the Enable forwarding check box and then click Browse.

  6. On the Select Mail User and Mailbox page, select a recipient to whom you want to forward all email messages that are sent to this mailbox.

    Important:
    As previously stated, when you configure mail forwarding in the EAC, messages will be delivered only to the forwarding address. Messages won't be copied to the user's mailbox. Use the Shell to configure forwarding so that messages will be delivered to the user mailbox and to the forwarding address.
  7. Click OK, and then click Save to save your changes.

Use the Shell to configure mail forwarding

This example forwards all email sent to the mailbox of Ken Sanchez to pilarp@contoso.com.

Copy Code 
Set-Mailbox -Identity "Ken Sanchez" -ForwardingAddress "pilarp@contoso.com"

This example delivers email to the mailbox of Dan Park and at the same time forwards all mail sent to Dan Park to danpark.parents@fineartschool.net.

Copy Code 
Set-Mailbox -Identity "Dan Park" -ForwardingAddress "danpark.parents@fineartschool.net" -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true

When a mailbox is created, the value of the DeliverToMailboxAndForward parameter is set to $false by default. When you use the EAC to configure mail forwarding, this value isn't changed. This means that email sent to the user's mailbox is sent to the forwarding address and not copied to the user's mailbox. If you want messages to be delivered to both the mailbox and the forwarding address, you have to set the DeliverToMailboxAndForward parameter to $true.

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-Mailbox.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you’ve successfully configured mail forwarding, do one of the following:

  1. In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes.

  2. In the list of user mailboxes, click the mailbox that you configured mail forwarding for, and then click Edit Edit Icon.

  3. On the mailbox properties page, click Mailbox Features.

  4. Under Delivery Options, click View details to view the mail forwarding settings.

Or

Run the following command in the Shell.

Copy Code 
Get-Mailbox <identity> | fl ForwardingAddress,DeliverToMailboxandForward

Verify that the forwarding address is listed in the ForwardingAddress parameter. Also, if the DeliverToMailboxAndForward parameter is set to $true, messages are delivered to the mailbox and to the forwarding address. If the parameter is set to $false, messages are delivered only to the forwarding address.