How to Send Email from Alias in Microsoft 365?

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If you want to receive incoming emails without disclosing your Microsoft 365 address, you need to enable a feature named Alias. This feature can be considered an additional email address that links with your existing M365 account and saves emails into your primary email account’s inbox. As an alias diversifies email accounts, it allows using multiple inboxes without paying for it. Microsoft allows users to create up to 400 aliases for a single email account. These aliases have access to your primary mailbox items such as inbox, contact list, account settings.

Many users consider alias and forwarding addresses as similar terms, but it is completely wrong. If we talk about the forwarding address, all the mail sent to a specific M365 address redirects to another email address. In contrast,in the alias, the incoming emails are sent to your primary account without revealing your email address. It should also be noted that the received mail from an alias can only be seen in the inbox of your mail address. If you want to view your incoming emails in the alias inbox, you must create a distribution group using your primary account as a member. If you are an Outlook user and have created several aliases in the account, you can use these aliases to access the account as it uses the same password.

Enable Send Email from Alias in Office 365

Before enabling this option in Microsoft 365, you must know that this feature works only for Exchange Online mailboxes. If you are an Exchange On-premises user, you can’t gain the advantage of this feature. There are two options available to enable the send as alias option in Office 365 that are listed below:

• Using Exchange Online Admin Center
• Using PowerShell

You can enable this option in Microsoft 365 using the Exchange Online admin center by simply following the below steps:

• First, sign in to Exchange Admin Center with your global administrator credentials.
• From the left menu, click on Settings -> Mail flow.
• Now, select the checkbox next to Turn on sending from aliases option on the Mail flow settings.
• Finally, click Save.

If you want to use PowerShell for enabling the send as an alias option in Office 365, ensure that you have the latest Exchange Online PowerShell module. You need to follow the below steps to enable this option using PowerShell:

• Open PowerShell as administrator and connect it to the Exchange Online using the below command:
  Connect-ExchangeOnline
• Enable send mail as an alias using the below Set-OrganizationConfig cmdlet.
  Set-OrganizationConfig -SendFromAliasEnabled $True
• You might need to wait for a while as the above command takes some time to save changes in the database.
• If you want to verify that the specific option has been enabled successfully, you need to run the below command:
  Get-OrganizationConfig | ft Name, SendFromAliasEnabled

If the result shows the status True, it means that the option has been enabled successfully.

If you need to know about the mail accounts linked as an alias in your account, you must follow the below steps:

• First, sign in to Microsoft 365 Admin Center with your global administrator credentials.
• Click on Users -> Active Users.
• Select username to check all the email accounts linked as an alias in your account.
• It will display the user information, such as username, mail address. Under Aliases in Account page, you can see all your mail accounts that are linked as an alias.

After enabling this option, you can now send emails from the alias in Office 365. To perform the same, follow the below steps:
Step 1: Add From field

• In Outlook Online, click on the New message option.
• Click on the three dots -> Show From

Step 2: Add your Alias address
To send mail as an alias, you need to add an alias address in your Office 365 account by following the below steps:

• Click on From option in Outlook Online.
• Select the Other email address option to change the default email address.

Step 3: Send as Alias

• Enter your alias address in the From field and click on the send option at last.

Conclusion

This Microsoft feature allows users to receive incoming mail without disclosing their primary address. If you enable this option, you need not remember long and difficult email addresses as you can create an alternate alias address. These aliases are configured on the mail server and can be assigned to only one user for a single mail domain. It should be clear that the mail alias doesn’t have any mailbox; all the incoming mail is saved in the primary mail inbox. While enabling or sending emails from an alias, you should keep a mailbox backup to prevent data loss. For this, Kernel Office 365 Backup & Restore is an efficient tool to backup your private Office 365 mailboxes, archive mailboxes, and Microsoft 365 groups. It can also save your data in multiple output formats such as PST, DOC, DOCX. This tool also offers automated backup using an inbuilt CSV file. Furthermore, it also allows users to generate a backup for only required data. If you use this tool, you can secure your Office 365 mailboxes from data loss.