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Enable Forwarding to an External Email Address.

Microsoft’s default security settings prevent forwarding to external email addresses. If you receive a bounce message when testing your forwarding rule, follow this guide to enable forwarding and ensure smooth delivery to your external address.

Note that the default Microsoft security settings do not allow email to be forwarded to an external email address. The procedure to enable this is relatively straightforward. 

You will know that this is an issue if you test the email forward and you get a bounce message indicating that the email could not be forwarded.

Log into the M365 admin console https://admin.microsoft.com/. Note that you will need to use an administrator account. If the M365 tenant was set up by your IT team, they will probably have control of the administrator credentials.

  1. Expand the navigation options and select Security.Screenshot 2024-10-11 105717
  2. From the Security/Microsoft Defender page, expand the Email & collaboration option, then click Policies & rules → Anti-spam.
  3. From the Anti-spam policies page, click Anti-spam outbound policy (Default) → Edit protection settings.Screenshot 2024-10-11 105951
  4. Change the Automatic forwarding rules drop-down from Automatic to On. Click on Save.Screenshot 2024-10-11 110126
  5. Click on Close 'X' in the top right corner, and you will have to complete the process.