Are you tired of creating multiple email accounts for different purposes? Do you want to manage your emails more efficiently? The Plus addressing in Exchange Online is the solution to your problem. This blog post will discuss how to enable and use email plus addressing in Exchange Online.
What is Plus Addressing?
Plus Addressing, also known as subaddressing, is a feature that allows you to create email addresses using a base email address and an extension. The extension is added after a plus sign (+) following the base email address.
If your email address is john.doe@example.com, you can use subaddresses such as john.doe+newsletter@example.com or john.doe+finance@example.com.
When an email is sent to an email address with a plus sign, Exchange Online ignores everything after the plus sign and delivers the email to the mailbox associated with the base email address.
This feature makes using unique email addresses for different purposes convenient without creating separate email accounts or adding SMTP proxy addresses.
Plus Addressing Use Cases
Here are some scenarios where Plus Addressing can be helpful:
- Organization: You can organize your emails into folders based on the extension you use. For example, all emails sent to john.doe+finance@example.com can be automatically moved to the Finance folder.
- Filtering: You can use filters to delete, forward automatically, or flag emails based on the extension used.
- Privacy: You can use a different extension for each website or service you sign up for, making tracking where your email address is being used easier.
Note. Plus addressing has been enabled by default in Exchange Online since May 2022.
Method 1: Enabling Plus Addressing in Exchange Admin Center
To enable Plus Addressing in Exchange Admin Center, follow these steps:
- Log in to your Exchange Admin Center.
- Navigate to Settings > Mail flow.
- Under Mail flow settings, uncheck the “Turn off plus address for your organization” and click Save.
Method 2: Enabling Plus Addressing in Exchange Online PowerShell
To enable Plus Addressing in Exchange Online PowerShell, follow these steps:
- Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.
- Check the current Plus addressing status by running this command:
Get-OrganizationConfig | Select-Object DisablePlusAddressInRecipients
If the value is True, then Plus addressing is disabled.
- To enable Plus addressing, run this command to set the DisablePlusAddressInRecipients to $false:
Set-OrganizationConfig -DisablePlusAddressInRecipients $false Get-OrganizationConfig | Select-Object DisablePlusAddressInRecipients
Testing the Email Plus Address
Now that you’ve confirmed Plus addressing is enabled in Exchange Online, we can email a mailbox using its Plus address.
In this example, we’ll email the Customer Service mailbox. This mailbox has two email addresses, none of which is a plus address.
Related article. How to add or remove SMTP alias to Exchange 2016 mailbox.
The email address that I will use as the recipient is: customerservice+newsletter@org870b.ga.
If all goes well, the message to customerservice+newsletter@org870b.ga will be received by customerservice@org870b.ga.
Tracking Email Plus Address Messages
When Exchange Online receives a message for a plus address, it generates two message trace events: Resolved and Delivered.
For example, the message sent to the plus address customerservice+newsletter@org870b.ga will appear as Resolved. The reason is the plus address doesn’t exist, but Exchange Online will redirect it to the address without the plus tag, which is customerservice@org870b.ga
Conclusion
Email plus addressing is a powerful tool to help manage your emails more efficiently and effectively. By enabling and using email plus addressing in Exchange Online, you can easily categorize and filter your emails, reduce the clutter in your inbox, and improve your productivity.
With the step-by-step guide in this blog post, you can quickly and easily set up email plus addressing in your Exchange Online account and start using it to its full potential. If you haven’t already, give email plus addressing a try and see how it can benefit you and your workflow.
