Hi,

I'm trying to configure a mailbox to have email sent to an internal email address (e.g. example@organisation<dot>com) to an external address (e.g. example@externaldomain<dot>com).

I have followed the instructions available here: https://technet<dot>microsoft<dot>com/en-AU/library/dd351134(v=exchg<dot>150)<dot>aspx

These instructions direct me to create a contact for the external user and I have done that and followed all applicable steps.

These instructions are supposed to be applicable to exchange online and exchange 2013, however there are discrepancies in some steps as some options are unavailable.

The steps listed are as below:

"

1. In the Exchange Admin Center, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes.

2. In the list of user mailboxes, click or tap the mailbox that you want to configure mail forwarding for, and then click or tapEdit .

3. On the mailbox properties page, click Mailbox Features.

4. Under Mail Flow, select View details to view or change the setting for forwarding email messages.

   On this page, you can set the maximum number of recipients that the user can send a message to. For on-premises Exchange organizations, the recipient limit is unlimited. For Exchange Online organizations, the limit is 500 recipients.

5. Check the Enable forwarding check box, and then click or tap Browse.

6. On the Select Recipient page, select a user you want to forward all email to. Select the Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox check box if you want both the recipient and the forwarding email address to get copies of the emails sent. Click or tap OK, and then click or tap Save.

What if you want to forward mail to an address outside your organization? Or forward mail to multiple recipients? You can do that, too!

• External addressesCreate a mail contact and then, in the steps above, select the mail contact on the Select Recipientpage. Need to know how to create a mail contact? Check out Manage mail contacts.

• Multiple recipientsCreate a distribution group, add recipients to it, and then in the steps above, select the mail contact on the Select Recipient page. Need to know how to create a mail contact? Check out Manage Distribution Groups.

"

In Step 5, when I click browse and look for the contact it is not listed. Only user mailboxes are listed.

Can someone please guide me here as I can't see where i'm going wrong?

Regards,

Manning

• Edited by Manning___ 6 hours 48 minutes ago

Hi Manning,

Thank you for your question.

By my testing, when we click Browse, we could see the mail contact. I will give some steps to create mail contact:

1.        Refer to the following link: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998858(v=exchg.150).aspx and click Save;
2.        As the following snapshot:
3.        Then , when we click browser, as the following snapshot:
4.        If you didnt see, we could restart IIS to check if the issue persist, or update Exchange 2013 to CU5 or later.

If there are any questions regarding this issue, please be free to let me know.

Best Regard,

Jim

Hi Jim,

thanks for the reply,

I have had a look and it appears the version of exchange is RTM (516.32).

I will update it to CU9 and if this resolves the issue, ill mark your answer as 'The Best Answer'.

Thanks for the help.

Hi Manning,

It should not be limited to the versions unless its a bug. Because this option is available since Ex2003 as far as I know.

So try the solution from Jim prior to updating Exchange.

Steps:

1. Create the Mail Contact, it should be listed under the Recipients.

2. Proceed with Step 5, click browse and look for the contact.

PowerShell for the same steps:

#In the Shell, run the following command to display information about the mail contact.
Get-MailContact "Alan Shen -Contact" | FL Name,RecipientTypeDetails,ExternalEmailAddress

#If not found run the below cmdlet to create it
New-MailContact -Name "Alan Shen-Contact" -ExternalEmailAddress alans@fourthcoffee.com


#Sometimes there can be contacts without Email enabled
Get-Contact | Where { $_.RecipientType -eq "Contact" }

#If found you can mail-enable them as bleow
Enable-MailContact -Identity "Rene Valdes-Contact" -ExternalEmailAddress renev@tailspintoys.com


#Its usually good to keep the mail-enabled contact name different from the internal user name.


#Forward all messages and also retain emails in the mailbox 
Set-Mailbox -Identity Diana Walda -ForwardingAddress xyz@gmail.com -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true

#Check if forwarding is correctly setup
Get-Mailbox -Identity Diana Walda | fl Alias, ForwardingAddress

References:

Manage mail contacts
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998858(v=exchg.150).aspx

Configure Email Forwarding in Exchange 2013 Using EMS
http://www.mustbegeek.com/configure-email-forwarding-in-exchange-2013-using-ems/