Add/remove email addresses for a mailbox

You can use the EAC or the Exchange Management Shell to add or remove an email address for a user mailbox. You can configure more than one email address for the same mailbox. The additional addresses are called proxy addresses. A proxy address lets a user receive email that's sent to a different email address. Any email message sent to the user's proxy address is delivered to their primary email address, which is also known as the primary SMTP address or the default reply address.

Note

The procedures in this topic show how to add or remove email addresses for a user mailbox. You can use similar procedures to add or remove email addresses for other recipient types.

For additional management tasks related to managing recipients, see the "Recipients documentation" table in Recipients.

What do you need to know before you begin?

Tip

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Add an email address to a user mailbox

Use the EAC to add an email address

  1. In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes.

  2. In the list of user mailboxes, click the mailbox that you want to add an email address to, and then click Edit Edit icon..

  3. On the mailbox properties page, click Email Address.

    Note

    On the Email Address page, the primary SMTP address is displayed in bold text in the address list, with the uppercase SMTP value in the Type column.

  4. Click Add Add icon., and then click SMTP to add an SMTP email address to this mailbox.

    Note

    SMTP is the default email address type. You can also add Exchange Unified Messaging (EUM) addresses or custom addresses to a mailbox in Exchange 2016. For more information, see "Change user mailbox properties" in the Manage user mailboxes topic. (Note: Unified Messaging is not available in Exchange 2019.)

  5. Type the new SMTP address in the Email address box, and then click OK.

    The new address is displayed in the list of email addresses for the selected mailbox.

  6. Click Save to save the change.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to add an email address

The email addresses associated with a mailbox are contained in the EmailAddresses property for the mailbox. Because it can contain more than one email address, the EmailAddresses property is known as a multivalued property. The following examples show different ways to modify a multivalued property.

This example shows how to add an SMTP address to the mailbox of Dan Jump.

Set-Mailbox "Dan Jump" -EmailAddresses @{add="dan.jump@northamerica.contoso.com"}

This example shows how to add multiple SMTP addresses to a mailbox.

Set-Mailbox "Dan Jump" -EmailAddresses @{add="dan.jump@northamerica.contoso.com","danj@tailspintoys.com"}

For more information about how to use this method of adding and removing values for multivalued properties, see Modifying Multivalued Properties.

This example shows another way to add email addresses to a mailbox by specifying all addresses associated with the mailbox. In this example, danj@tailspintoys.com is the new email address that you want to add. The other two email addresses are existing addresses. The address with the case-sensitive qualifier SMTP is the primary SMTP address. You have to include all email addresses for the mailbox when you use this command syntax. If you don't, the addresses specified in the command will overwrite the existing addresses.

Set-Mailbox "Dan Jump" -EmailAddresses "SMTP:dan.jump@contoso.com","dan.jump@northamerica.contoso.com","danj@tailspintoys.com"

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-Mailbox.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully added an email address to a mailbox, do one of the following:

  • In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes, click the mailbox, and then click Edit Edit icon..

  • On the mailbox properties page, click Email Address.

  • In the list of email addresses for the mailbox, verify that the new email address is included.

Or

  • Run the following command in the Exchange Management Shell.

    Get-Mailbox <identity> | Format-List EmailAddresses
    
  • Verify that the new email address is included in the results.

Remove an email address from a user mailbox

Use the EAC to remove an email address

  1. In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes.

  2. In the list of user mailboxes, click the mailbox that you want to remove an email address from, and then click Edit Edit icon..

  3. On the mailbox properties page, click Email Address.

  4. In the list of email addresses, select the address you want to remove, and then click Remove Remove icon..

  5. Click Save to save the change.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to remove an email address

This example shows how to remove an email address from the mailbox of Janet Schorr.

Set-Mailbox "Janet Schorr" -EmailAddresses @{remove="janets@corp.contoso.com"}

This example shows how to remove multiple addresses from a mailbox.

Set-Mailbox "Janet Schorr" -EmailAddresses @{remove="janet.schorr@corp.contoso.com","janets@tailspintoys.com"}

For more information about how to use this method of adding and removing values for multivalued properties, see Modifying Multivalued Properties.

You can also remove an email address by omitting it from the command to set email addresses for a mailbox. For example, let's say Janet Schorr's mailbox has three email addresses: janets@contoso.com (the primary SMTP address), janets@corp.contoso.com, and janets@tailspintoys.com. To remove the address janets@corp.contoso.com, you would run the following command.

Set-Mailbox "Janet Schorr" -EmailAddresses "SMTP:janets@contoso.com","janets@tailspintoys.com"

Because janets@corp.contoso.com was omitted in the previous command, it's removed from the mailbox.

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-Mailbox.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully removed an email address from a mailbox, do one of the following:

  • In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes, click the mailbox, and then click Edit Edit icon..

  • On the mailbox properties page, click Email Address.

  • In the list of email addresses for the mailbox, verify that the email address isn't included.

Or

  • Run the following command in the Exchange Management Shell.

    Get-Mailbox <identity> | Format-List EmailAddresses
    
  • Verify that the email address isn't included in the results.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to add email addresses to multiple mailboxes

You can add a new email address to multiple mailboxes at one time by using the Exchange Management Shell and a comma separated values (CSV) file.

This example imports data from C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\AddEmailAddress.csv, which has the following format.

Mailbox,NewEmailAddress
Dan Jump,danj@northamerica.contoso.com
David Pelton,davidp@northamerica.contoso.com
Kim Akers,kima@northamerica.contoso.com
Janet Schorr,janets@northamerica.contoso.com
Jeffrey Zeng,jeffreyz@northamerica.contoso.com
Spencer Low,spencerl@northamerica.contoso.com
Toni Poe,tonip@northamerica.contoso.com
...

Run the following command to use the data in the CSV file to add the email address to each mailbox specified in the CSV file.

Import-CSV "C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\AddEmailAddress.csv" | foreach {Set-Mailbox $_.Mailbox -EmailAddresses @{add=$_.NewEmailAddress}}

Note

The column names in the first row of this CSV file (Mailbox,NewEmailAddress) are arbitrary. Whatever you use for column names, make sure you use the same column names in the Exchange Management Shell command.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully added an email address to multiple mailboxes, do one of the following:

  • In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes, click a mailbox that you added the address to, and then click Edit Edit icon..

  • On the mailbox properties page, click Email Address.

  • In the list of email addresses for the mailbox, verify that the new email address is included.

Or

  • Run the following command in the Exchange Management Shell, using the same CSV file that you used to add the new email address.

    Import-CSV "C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\AddEmailAddress.csv" | foreach {Get-Mailbox $_.Mailbox | Format-List Name,EmailAddresses}
    
  • Verify that the new email address is included in the results for each mailbox.