2

In our company some of our employee's have multiple email addresses on multiple domains. Now we have tried multiple setup to manage this situation, only to find that there is no ideal one. We are using Exchange 2013 with Outlook 2013 clients.

One of the main problems is that if i receive an email on [email protected], but my default smtp is [email protected], outlook will set [email protected] as from address. I want it to select the to address as default reply address.

At first we gave the user an alias to the mailbox. This works well for receiving mail, but it's hard to reply with the given address. You'd manually have to select the 'From' address each time you need to send an email.

Then we tried to give the user a second mailbox, with send as and full control permissions. Still no joy. The only luck we had was to give the user a second mailbox on a second user with no send as or full control permissions. Only downside here is that there are 2 AD users needed since Exchange won't allow two mailboxes on the same user account. This situation however solves the replying issue when you add 2 exchange accounts to outlook / mobile, but our add-in licenses need extra user accounts.

Anyone has any suggestion on how to resolve this issue? Any suggestions on a better implementation? Can't believe Microsoft hasn't made up any solution for this 'old' problem.

2
  • Is the username before the "@" the same at both domains?
    – ewwhite
    Oct 28, 2014 at 12:54
  • Yes, its generally the same...
    – ferdyh
    Oct 30, 2014 at 8:26

2 Answers 2

1

One of the main problems is that if i receive an email on [email protected], but my default smtp is [email protected], outlook will set [email protected] as from address. I want it to select the to address as default reply address.

What you want can't be done natively in Outlook. You can only have one default 'From:' address. I believe there are third party add-ins you can get that may provide the functionality you desire.

At first we gave the user an alias to the mailbox. This works well for receiving mail, but it's hard to reply with the given address. You'd manually have to select the 'From' address each time you need to send an email

How hard is it to select a 'From' address from a dropdown? I think the users will just have to get used to it.

1
  • Ofcourse the user can get used to it, however its easily forgotten and the reply address is of the wrong company.
    – ferdyh
    Oct 30, 2014 at 8:27
1

When I deal with this, it's usually a situation where a company has multiple domains and need for some messages to originate from a user at a certain domain. I explain to people pre-deployment that this is a problem and that Exchange can really only send from one address at a time.

Did you recently move to Exchange? Were the users used to something else?

Selecting the From: address is the norm.

You have third-party solutions to this (here and here).

If you have flexibility on the incoming address, a Shared Mailbox is also an option. I do this for things like [email protected]

2
  • With a shared mailbox, the user still has to select the right 'from' address...
    – ferdyh
    Oct 30, 2014 at 8:28
  • That's fine. The user should understand where they're sending from if having multiple email addresses is important enough to them.
    – ewwhite
    Oct 30, 2014 at 10:06

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .