Your organization has turned off Automatic forwards for security reasons. It helps protect emails from being forwarded to a hacker’s email address if your account became compromised. It also stops a disgruntled employee from sending information to the wrong place. If you use Power Automate (Microsoft Flow) it is more secure.
So, what if you have an email that you always like to send to a coworker(s) and you do not want to use a DL? You can use Power Automate (which is included in Office 365) to do this for you.
Power Automate is different than using Inbox rules to forward email. It executes actions as you do instead of completing the action without a record (like auto-forwarding did). You can see what you have done, and it satisfies basic security that blocks forwarding of messages to external recipients.
If you use MFA to login to Office 365, it is pretty much a bullet proof way of forwarding mail. If an Admin has disabled Auto-forwarding across the organization, it is practically impossible to be compromised.
Steps To Use Power Automate (Microsoft Flow)
To set up an email re-direct to an external user, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Go to flow.microsoft.com and sign-in with your Office 365 account. Then click “Create”. We are going to create one from scratch.
Step 2: Name your flow and choose the trigger. The trigger you want is “When an email arrives.” Power Automate maintains its own API-Level access, like Microsoft Graph, to connect to services so no password is needed.
Step 3: Edit in your email “rule” We want to use the subject filter, so we choose “Show advanced options” and then type what we want in the Subject Filter. You will see there are many options, and other advanced conditions to filter email.
Step 4: Now tell Power Automate “What to do next”. In this example, Power Automate is looking for emails with what you are looking for in the subject line, but you need to tell it what to do next. You want to choose “New Step” and then choose “Forward an Email” for Office 365 Outlook
Step 5: Program your Forward Rule This is imperative. You must ensure that you choose the “Message ID” of your email from step 1. Use the search in the “Message ID” box you will get a list of options, choose Message ID.
Step 6: Program your rule continued – Finally, enter the email you want to send the email to and then hit Save. If you followed all the steps above, you should get a “Saved Successfully” message. If you get an error, you can use the flow checker to see what is broken.
Step 7: Run the rule – You may need to modify the rule. In the example, any email that is received with the subject line you specify will be forwarded externally. You test the flow prior to running the rule. Give it a few minutes so the cloud can do its thing and sync but you should be good to go!
Happy IT’ing
Dan
Dan
I am an IT professional with over twenty years experience in the field. I have supported thousands of users over the years. The organizations I have worked for range in size from one person to hundreds of people. I have performed support from Help Desk, Network / Cloud Administration, Network Support, Application Support, Implementation and Security.