Exchange forward email to external address

There are many reasons to need to forward on email collected by Microsoft Exchange, such as vacation planning, change of domains or migration to a new system using dual delivery. This is how you set up Exchange forward email to external address.

Its done in two steps because you need to create a contact for Exchange to send too. If you were forwarding internally you only need the first step as the mailbox exists in Exchange already. 

Create a MailContact

Create a MailContact using the EMC:

1. Expand Recipient Configuration | Mail Contact

2. In the Action pane, click New Mail Contact

3. To create a new Contact object, leave the default (New Contact) selected | click Next

Leaving New Contact selected to move to the extended settings

4. Type First name, Last name

Adding detail to the new user

5. Click Edit to add the external email address

6. Click New to complete creation of new MailContact

Showing new user created in Mail Contact’s

Forward the Email

Now that we have a MailContact created for the external recipient’s email address, we can forward mail for the Exchange recipient to the MailContact. To configure mail forwarding using the EMC:

1. Expand Recipient Configuration | Mailbox | select mailbox | properties | Mail Flow Settings tab | Delivery Options

Finding delivery options for a microsoft exchange mailbox

2. Under Forwarding address, select Forward to
3. Click Browse to select the MailContact

Browse to select the mail contact

4. Optional: If a copy of the message needs to be delivered to both the external recipient and the original recipient’s mailbox, select the Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox

Opting to send the email to both internal and external addresses