Add another email alias for a user

This article is for Microsoft 365 administrators who have business subscriptions.

A primary email address in Microsoft 365 is usually the email address a user was assigned when their account was created. When the user sends email to someone else, their primary email address is what typically appears in the From field in email apps. They can also have more than one email address associated with their Microsoft 365 for business account. These additional addresses are called aliases.

For example, let's say Jenna has the email address [e-mail], but she also wants to receive email at [e-mail] because some people refer to her by that name. You can create aliases for her so that both email addresses go to Jenna's inbox.

You can create up to 400 aliases for a user. No additional fees or licenses are required.

Add email aliases to a user

You must have admin permissions to do this.

1. In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.

2. On the Active Users page, select the user > Manage email aliases. You won't see this option if the person doesn't have a license assigned to them.

3. Select + Add an alias and enter a new alias for the user.

    

4. When you're done, choose Save changes.

5. Wait 24 hours for the new aliases to populate throughout Microsoft 365.

   The user will now have a primary address and an alias. For example, all mail sent to Eliza Hoffman's primary address, [e-mail], and her alias, [e-mail], will go to Eliza's Inbox.

6. When the user replies, the From address will depend on her Outlook client. Outlook on the web will use the alias at which the email was received (we'll call this the ping-pong principle). Outlook desktop will use her primary email alias. For example, let's say a message is sent to [e-mail], and it arrives in Eliza's inbox. When Eliza replies to the message using Outlook desktop, her primary email address will appear as [e-mail], not [e-mail].

Did you get "A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name EmailAddresses"?

If you get the error message "A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name EmailAddresses" it means that it's taking a bit longer to finish setting up your tenant, or your custom domain if you recently added one. The setup process can take up to 4 hours to complete. Wait a while so the set up process has time to finish, and then try again.

Did you purchase your subscription from GoDaddy or another Partner?

If you purchased your subscription from GoDaddy or another Partner, to set the new alias as the primary, you must go to the GoDaddy/partner management console.

Sending email from the proxy address easily

A new feature is rolling out in April 2021 that allows users to send from their aliases easily when using Outlook on the web. When the feature rolls out to a tenancy where the tenant admin uses the Set-OrganizationConfig -SendFromAliasEnabled $true cmdlet, users within the tenancy will get access to a list of checkboxes where each entry corresponds to an alias in their Outlook settings. Selecting an alias will make it appear in the From dropdown in the Compose form.