Programming Tutorials

Making your Alias email as 'Send As' in Office 365

By: Ashley in Office365 Tutorials on 2012-01-19  

I have come across this many times and it is hard to find the right document. Most of them are misleading. They suggest to use distribution list as a workaround. But this solution below lets you use the outlook to configure your alias email to be used as 'Send As'. For example you have two emails [email protected] and [email protected] or [email protected] and you want to be able to send emails as any of these emails. It is possible and you can achieve it as below.

Step 1 - Add an alias to your account

    First, you'll want to add the alias to your account.  You can do this by opening the Portal, going to the Admin page, where you can access the Exchange Control Panel.  For Enterprise users it's the link under Exchange Online that says 'Manage', and for Small Business users it's the link under Outlook that says 'General Settings'.  When you open a mailbox  in the Exchange Control Panel you can open the E-Mail Options section and add your alias there.  Your alias can be any username that you haven't already used, on any domain that you have added and verified in your Office 365 subscription.

Step 2 - Gather the connection details for your Office 365 mailbox

    Next, you'll need to gather the protocol information provided in your Outlook Web App.  Go to https://mail.outlook365.com and sign into your account, to the mailbox.  Go to the Options link and choose See All Options.  On the Account page, you can choose My Account, and there's a link there for 'Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access'.  You'll want to write down that information or keep the window open for the next step.

Step 3 - Configure Outlook to send email messages as the alias

    This step will add a new POP account to your Outlook profile, but it'll be a phantom account.  It's actually connecting to your own Exchange mailbox, only as a POP account, and specifically using your alias as the email address instead of your normal mailbox address.  Follow these steps carefully, and then proceed onto Step 4 for the last bit of configuration.

    1) Open Outlook so that you're looking at your Office 365 mailbox.

    2) Click File, then Account Settings, and then click Account Settings again.

    3) On the E-mail tab, click New.

    4) Click 'Manually configure server settings or additional server types', and then click Next.  Choose Internet E-mail, and then click Next.

    5) Enter the following information:

        a. Your name: Your display name.

        b. E-mail Address: The alias that you want to send from.

        c. Account Type: POP3

        d. Incoming mail server: Use the POP server that you found in Step 2.  It should look like pod#####.outlook.com.

        e. Outgoing mail server (SMTP): Use the SMTP server that you obtained from Step 2. It should look like the POP server, although it may be slightly different.

        f. Username: You'll need to fill in the username you use to sign into Office 365.  Usually this will look like [email protected].

        g. Password: This is where you enter your Office 365 password.

    6) Click More Settings, and then click the Outgoing Server tab.  Click to select the 'My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication' check box.

    7) Click the Advanced tab, and then click to select the 'This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)' check box.

    8) In the Outgoing server (SMTP) box, type 587.

    9) In the 'Use the following type of encrypted connection' list, click TLS.

    10) Under Delivery, set the delivery options that you want.  It's probably best to choose 'Leave a copy of messages on the server', and leave the other two boxes unchecked.  After that, click Ok.

    11) Click Next. The account settings that you entered should be tested. When these tests are completed, click Close.  After that, click Finish.

Step 4 - Make sure that your copy of Outlook is not sending and receiving items with the POP account.

    These instructions will help configure Outlook so that it isn't trying to use the phantom POP account send and receive email.  Your mailbox is already doing that properly, we're just 'branding' it with your alias when you want to send as another email address.

    1) In Outlook, click File, click Options, and then on the left hand window, click Advanced.

    2) Under Send and receive, click Send/Receive.

    3) In the Group Name area, select All Accounts, and then click Edit.

    4) In the Accounts list, select the new email alias account.

    5) Click to clear the 'Include the selected account in this group' check box so that it isn't checked.

    6) Click OK, click Close, and then click OK.

After that, you should be able to send as your alias, allowing you to send email to users that appears to come from a different email address than your own.  To change between the two addresses, you may need to enable the From: field in Outlook, which is as easy as opening a new email message, choosing the Options tab, where you can choose 'From: field' in the Show Fields group.