Forward client email automatically from Outlook
The rule takes a minute. Whether your organisation lets it leave the building is the part to check first.
Walkthrough · 4 min read
Outlook needs no confirmation step — you write an inbox rule and it starts working. The obstacle here is a different one, and it is worth reading before you spend time on the setup: most Microsoft 365 organisations do not allow mail to be automatically forwarded to an address outside the organisation.
Important: Microsoft turned this off by default. The setting that governs it sits in an anti-spam policy an administrator controls, its default value has meant "forwarding disabled" for organisations set up since 2021, and it applies to inbox rules like the one below. When it blocks a message the message BOUNCES rather than disappearing, with a delivery failure whose text says your organisation does not allow external forwarding. If you get that, no rule you write will fix it — only an administrator changing the policy will.
If you are on a personal Outlook.com account, or a Microsoft 365 tenant you run yourself, none of that is likely to be in your way. Write the rule.
- In Outlook, open Settings, then Mail, then Rules.
- Add a rule and give it a name you will recognise in a year.
- Add a condition that matches this client and nothing else — their address as the sender, or their company domain. Do not use "apply to all messages" here, whatever the examples show.
- Add the action "Forward to" and paste the Stria drop address.
- Save the rule.
- Forward one real client message by hand and check it arrives. Then wait for a genuine one and confirm the rule caught it as well.
Note: Outlook offers "Forward to", "Forward as attachment" and "Redirect to", and the difference is who the message appears to be from. Forwarded mail looks like it came from you; redirected mail keeps the original sender. Either files fine. Forwarding is the more predictable of the two, because a redirected message can be harder for a receiving system to attribute.
Note: Copies stay in your mailbox. A forwarding rule does not move mail out of Outlook, so nothing is lost from your own record. Microsoft does note that a rule can stop working if the mailbox is over its storage limit, which is worth knowing because the symptom is silence rather than an error.
If your organisation blocks this, the fallback is a habit rather than a setting, and it is the same one everyone starts with: when a client email arrives that touches what you agreed, press forward and send it to the drop address. It takes a few seconds and it is what the address is for. What you lose is only the remembering, and you can make that easier — keep the address in your contacts under the client’s name so it autocompletes, and forward from the thread rather than opening Stria at all.
Important: Do not ask an administrator to turn off external forwarding checks across the whole organisation so that one rule works. That control exists because a compromised mailbox quietly forwarding everything outward is a real attack, and it is a reasonable thing for an employer to keep. If the policy allows exceptions, an exception for one destination is the right ask.
Copy a client’s drop address — in your Stria workspace.
Check the test message arrived — in your Stria workspace.