Microsoft Office 365 Catch-all using Additional Alias Email Addresses

Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials costs from £3.10 per ‘Exchange’ user per month

An ‘Exchange’ user is a single email account for a specified domain, with 50 Gb of storage and highly configurable mail server rules.

Some mail providers provide multiple email accounts for a given domain, so Office 365 can get quite expensive with multiple users, just for email.

Though it has to be said - the email service we have experienced for the last 4 months from Office 365 has been great for spam protection and reliability. You get what you pay for.

Office 365 by default does not support catch-all, that is email addresses not specifically defined in the mail server.

Additional alias addresses can be created to re-direct email to a specified user as a simple and safe substitute to catch-all.

Note that an additional alias address is distinct to a shared mailbox, which appears as a separate mail box from the user. Setting up shared mailboxes on Office 365 will be described in an upcoming post.

For this example, the ‘Exchange’ user will be [email protected]. Additional ‘catch-all’ email addresses for [email protected] and [email protected] will be configured.

Login to Office 365
Click the little box icons at the top left of the screen, then select the Admin icon
Under ‘USERS’ on the left hand pane, select ‘Active Users’
Select the user and click ‘EDIT’, on the right hand side
Select ‘Email addresses’
Click Add new under Other email addresses
Enter ‘howell’ in the space before the @ sign and click ‘Add’.
Repeat steps 6 and 7 to add ‘contact’ as an alias

That’s it, this method provides functionality similar to catch-all, whilst maintaining the excellent service from Office 365 email.

If you really do want a catch-all in Office 365 Business Essentials, then there is a good post by yourithelp.co.uk.