Fix Office 365 forwarding error Your message wasn’t delivered because the recipient’s email provider rejected it.
An Office 365 administrator can adjust the default setting in the Office 365 environment, making it possible to forward mail externally again. If you are a user of Office 365, please ask your IT Admin to adjust the setting and send him or her the URL of this web page.
If you are an administrator, follow these steps to re-enable External Forwarding:
- Go to the Office365 Security and Compliance Dashboard
- Expand Threat Management and click Policy
- Click Anti Spam
- In the Anti-Spam settings, locate Outbound spam filter policy (Always ON) and click Edit policy
- In the Outbound spam filter policy, expand Automatic Forwarding. The default is set to Automatic – System-controlled.
- Select On – Forwarding is enabled and click Save. Forwarding to external mail addresses is now allowed. Note Microsoft says it may take up to 24 hours before the change takes effect. Although it took 5 minutes in my case
A setting to rethink – Automatic Forwarding to external email addresses
You may wonder whether it is a good idea to change the default setting for automatic forwarding to external addresses.
One reason for not allowing it is data loss prevention. Recently I was with a customer whose password had been leaked. Hackers have gained access to his mailbox. Instead of directly using his mailbox, they set – unnoticed – a rule that automatically forwarded all mail to an external email address. A good example of corporate espionage.