How to get rid of "sending on behalf of" when sending from Outlook 2016 client

[akm510]

Note - this is not an issue in outlook.com - only an issue in my desktop version of Outlook 2016. And this has only become an issue since the Microsoft's migration to Exchange for Outlook which just hit my account today. (I have an Office 365 for Home account)

I am using outlook for my business email address which is on my own domain. I have that email account set up as my windows live account and my primary account in outlook.com. I originally had it set up as a pop account there but today I had to change it to imap to get it to work again after Microsoft's changes. Everything used to work fine - I had my outlook.com account (my own domain business email) set up as an eas account in Outlook 2016 on my desktop - and since that email was primary when I sent emails from outlook it would default as the Send From account. Now because of Microsoft's switch to Exchange that all stopped working and I had to remove the exchange active sync account and add it as an exchange account - except that I couldn't do that with my own domain account - so I had to add a new alias in outlook.com of a new outlook.com email account that I have no intention of using at all - but this was the only way I could get my outlook client to connect automatically with my outlook.com account. That appeared to work (although it isn't using the actual alias I set up, it shows the account as some super long email address outlook_as90350293r52320395203909@outlook.com - and it won't allow me to change the name) but the real issue is that when I send emails from my desktop version of outlook and select to send from my own domain email account the emails go through as sent from outlook_as90350293r52320395203909@outlook.com on behalf of myemail.mydomain.com. When I send an email from outlook.com I get a different result - the sent from is my own email address - so I just need to get the outlook client working the same way.
I simply cannot have this for my business. How do I get this fixed??

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I originally had it set up as a pop account there but today I had to change it to imap to get it to work again after Microsoft's changes.

POP3 is disabled by default at outlook.com. You can enable it in outlook.com options.

Now because of Microsoft's switch to Exchange that all stopped working and I had to remove the exchange active sync account and add it as an exchange account - except that I couldn't do that with my own domain account - so I had to add a new alias in outlook.com of a new outlook.com email account that I have no intention of using at all - but this was the only way I could get my outlook client to connect automatically with my outlook.com account. That appeared to work (although it isn't using the actual alias I set up, it shows the account as some super long email address

Correct, you need to use an outlook.com account to use auto account setup. BTW, if this is what you are referring to as imap, it's not - it's exchange. IMAP is email only.

When you used activesync, the from address should have been the goofy address too.... If you want to send from the non-microsoft address, it needs added as a connected account in outlook.com.

 

[akm510]

Hi Diane - I'm sorry if I wasn't very clear - I have my own domain email set up as a connected account in outlook.com using IMAP and it is set as my primary account. And when I send emails from outlook.com they send perfectly with a from as my own domain email account. But my problem is with my outlook 2016 client - when it connected to my outlook.com account using eas it was fine - but now using exchange I cannot send from my own domain email from the outlook client without the "on behalf of" message which won't work for my business.

Here is some more background - from reading other posts I saw that to get outlook exchange to auto find my outlook.com account I had to create an actual outlook.com email in outlook.com - so I did that and that is when the "on behalf of started". I've since ready some other posts (that you are on also) that said that I could add a CNAME on my website to autodiscover outlook.com - so now I have switched back and tried that approach which worked for exchange to find my own domain email account but now I'm getting a different message trying to open outlook: The name cannot be matched to a name in the address book. So I still don't have a solution.

Can you help me figure out the best solution - I have my own domain email account which is my primary business account but then I also have three other email addresses that I use regularly. I have office 365 home. I decided to put all of my emails through outlook.com (as connected accounts) so that I could get them all in one inbox on all devices along with my calendar. And when I send business calendar requests I need them to come from my own domain email account. Previously in my outlook client they were all receiving fine although the only one I could send from was my own domain account because it was my primary windows live account. In order to send from the other accounts in the outlook client I had to add them as pop accounts in the outlook client. But this was fine as the other emails are secondary. Now with the switch to exchange I'm trying to get back to being able to send from my own domain account for both emails and calendar requests. So I just want to be be able to send and receive from the multiple accounts from within my outlook client - and I want all calendar requests on the same one calendar that is associated with my own domain email account.

 

[PMR0001]

akm510, as I have posted elsewhere, I have the same problem. EAS used my name@mydomain.com address for sending with no problem at all, just like other people. I could stick with EAS but as explained in another thread, this now has problems. All very disappointing. And no one seems to know how to fix it!

 

[akm510]

Yeah this is still killing me - I have added my other accounts to Outlook using POP and then I can send from them and they are received correctly but it is a total pain because when I reply to emails it doesn't default to the address it was sent to, always reverts back to my outlook.com email, so I have to select the correct Send From account and then also delete my own address from the send to email list (for some reason when I change accounts it pops my email address up in the list) so on basically every email I send I have to do this. Plus it is duplicating the emails down below in another pop inbox. And on top of everything the time that it takes to receive emails is much longer than it was on EAS - there was always an annoying delay but now it is only syncing like once an hour - it's ridiculous. I've started researching other solutions other than Outlook - like eM Client - which look great except that they don't have a mobile app! I just don't understand why it is so hard to get one interface for multiple accounts that functions well and across all devices - I know I'm not alone in needing this functionality!

 

[PMR0001]

The solution which worked for me (and still does other than the problems I previously described in other posts) was as follows (which uses EAS):
1. my windows account is login username is name@mydomain.com
2. I created an outlook email address, call it othername@outlook.com
3. in outlook.com, set up name@mydomain.com as the primary alias
4. set up forwarding on the mydomain.com mail server so it forwards all emails sent to name@mydomain.com to othername@outlook.com: this gets over the issue of delays which results when setting up the Microsoft server to contact the pop/imap server for the mydomain.com host, as it only does this every 20' or 30' or so
5. in outlook.com set up the send address as name@mydomain.com and specific the smtp server for the mydomain.com host
6. set up EAS in outlook to use the s.outlook.com server with an email address of name@mydomain.com

You can then configure all other computers and mobile devices as per 6. above.

Emails sent to you appear with little delay and outlook 2016 (and presumably earlier versions) send from name@mydomain.com (and reply from this as well). Outlook.com also does the same.

HOWEVER, drafts do not sync across platforms and there are apparently calendar sync issues too, hence the attraction of the move to Exchange as opposed to EAS.

BUT as we know, Exchange using Outlook on a PC does not send from the right address, i.e. name@mydomain.com, though outlook.com does!

I suspect the problem is that whilst outlook.com uses the 'send from' details configured in outlook.com, as does EAS, for some reason when using Outlook on the PC with Exchange, this does not work because it is not using the SMTP server setup via outlook.com. Note also that in order to connect outlook on the PC using the exchange server, one cannot do this using name@mydomain.com (my login), instead you have to use othername@outlook.com. What I also suspect (you need to check) is that if othername@outlook.com is not the primary, then emails will be sent from the outlook...hex number@outlook.com address, but if othername@outlook.com is primary, it will sent from this.

I have read that if using office 365 with a name@mydomain.com, one has to configure CNAME, MX and txt entries and perhaps more on the host server, but this should not be necessary, as using EAS has proved (unless perhaps one has lots of names using mydomain.com such that doing individually is a pain).

I wish Microsoft would fix it such that Outlook on the PC uses the SMTP settings configured in outlook.com. OR does anyone know a workaround?

 

[akm510]

PMR001 - thanks so much for your information - it is very helpful and I may still try EAS again but the reason I was forced to switch from EAS to Exchange was that my calendar disappeared out of outlook and my calendar is essential for my business and personal life. Otherwise everything else you have described would work for me and the tip about the forwarding to improve the speed is very good to know. I did actually add a CNAME to my domain for outlook autodiscover and got Exchange to recognize and find my outlook account using mydomain.com email - and it gave me a success message and everything but then when I tried to into Outlook I got this other error: "the name cannot be matched to a name in the address list" and then outlook would fail to open and the configuration for the outlook under mydomain.com would get removed. So I was very close and yet could not get it working even though I have read that other people are successfully using it that way. But even so I would have some of the same issues but at least for my main account I think it would work correctly. It is very helpful to hear some explanation (i.e. SMTP) as to the cause of what sending from Outlook client is different from outlook.com, thank you for that also.

 

[akm510]

PMR001 - I set up one of my accounts to forward today instead of as a connected account but I realized that this approach only works if you have one send from account and I have multiple. So if my accounts are just forwarded into outlook I can only send from one of them - and part of what I am trying to accomplish is to be able to send from multiple accounts either from my desktop or my phone. Have I misunderstood anything about what you have set up or do you only need to send from one account?

 

[PMR0001]

AKM510: I only had to send from one account so you would need a different approach. I have not tried this, but using the EAS server (s.outlook.com) technique, perhaps you could create multiple accounts in outlook. So, if you had two Microsoft accounts say joe1@mydomain.com and joe2@mydomain.com, then create joe1.mydomain@outlook.com and joe2.mydomain@outlook.com (or something like this, what comes before the @ is not important). In outlook.com, then set up send from address, i.e. joe1@mydomain.com for the joe1.mydomain@outlook.com account and joe2@mydomain.com for the joe2.mydomain@outlook.com address. Your joe1 and joe2 @mydomain.com accounts can then forward to their respective outlook accounts. Don't forget to set the primary alias as the mydomain.com for each account.

Clearly, you will not be able to see emails from both accounts within the same outlook.com webpage, but in outlook2016 you could connect both accounts and have a separate inbox for each. When it comes to sending, you would set the default send address, but you could then choose to send from a different address if you wished.

As I say, I have not tried this, but is an option and does mean sticking with EAS and its problems.

 

[akm510]

Thanks PMR0001 - interesting idea that I hadn't thought of. There are clearly no approaches that don't also have major drawbacks so I am stuck picking from the lesser of evils!

 

[Chuck Davis]

Here's a challenging variation on this problem. My "On Behalf Of" e-mail address isn't a physical address and doesn't have an SMTP server associated with it.

The e-mail address that I use is "John@Smith.Name". ("dot name" is a DNS Top Level Domain that auto-forwards to an actual physical e-mailbox. I've been using it for years.) John@Smith.Name auto-forwards to "John_Smith@Outlook.com". My e-mail client is Outlook 2016.

The setup documented by PMR0001 won't work because John@Smith.Name isn't a "real" e-mailbox and there is no SMTP server associated with it. I've tried using other SMTP servers that I have access to, but there has always been some validation check that the "dot name" address won't get past.

Any suggestions on how to skin this particular cat would be greatly appreciated.

I am getting ready to stand up a QNAP NAS, which can run a mailserver. I would want to keep my Outlook.com/Outlook 2016 connection for inbound traffic (and contacts and calendar), but is there a way I could use the NAS mailserver to send outbound traffic from John@Smith.Name using Outlook 2016? (At least while on the LAN)

(Side Question - I previously had John@Smith.Name as an alias in Outlook.com, and e-mails at least showed "On behalf of John@Smith.Name". During the changeover to the "new" Outlook.com the alias became screwed up and had to be deleted from my Outlook.com account. When I try to put the alias back in, I'm getting the "....already taken" message. I can put in a (fake) alias, JohnS@Smith.Name, so the "new" Outlook.com can still accept "dot name" aliases. Any idea how long it will be until I can reuse the John@Smith.Name alias? It has been at least 30 days since I deleted the alias.)

Thanks!

 

[Diane Poremsky]

I'm surprised it doesn't work, because it's an outside address. Especially if you added it back to the same outlook.com account. The waiting period for outlook.com addresses that are cancelled is 1 yr.

What you need is a mail server set up to 'host' both incoming and outgoing emai so outlook.com can add it as a connected account - unless they add send only accounts back (which I'm not expecting). The SMTP server needs to be functional but outlook.com needs to be able to ping it for incoming mail too.

Now... if you want a send only account in outlook desktop, add the account as pop3 with the valid smtp server and disable checking for incoming email.
How to create a send-only POP3 account

FWIW, they are working on fixing some issues with the outside addresses in outlook.com but i don't have an ETA or know exactly what the 'fix' will be - it might be something perfect or something worse.

 

[viciva]

Hello,

there exists a tool named SetAccount that allows you to get rid of "sending on behalf of" when sending from Outlook 2016 client.

Regards,
Victor Ivanidze