Office 365 Forwarder Weirdness

[Michael]

Hello all,

 

I'm experiencing some Office 365 forwarder weirdness I hope someone can explain -

 

E-mail was forwarded from account A to account B for a while, no problems.

 

Account B (who was temporary), has now had their e-mail forwarded back to account A, however this doesn't appear to be working.

 

I've checked in the GUI, checked via Powershell and all appears correct. Sending e-mail to account A still arrives in account B. Any ideas please?

[Steve21]

How was it forwarded in the first place? Is it by outlook rule? transport rule? owa rule?

 

Steve

[Michael]

OWA rule.

[Steve21]

Did you run a trace report on one of the messages? Should show where it's getting redirected by

 

Steve

[Michael]

Did you run a trace report on one of the messages? Should show where it's getting redirected by

 

Steve

 

How do I do that?

 

I've also checked Microsoft Outlook for any rules and there's nothing being applied.

[Steve21]

In the admin console, Go to Exchange, Mailflow, message trace.

 

Do a 24 hour trace on the box that it's actually arriving to.

 

When it shows the emails you're referring to, double click it and look at what it's doing

 

E.g.

Receive

Transport Rule - Redirect Message - Transport Rule "Steve - Redirect to Steve" blah blah

Receive

Spam Diagnostics

Deliver

 

Steve

[Michael]

I've had a look at this and it just tells me what I already know. The message(s) are being re-directed, despite the fact both the GUI and Powershell say otherwise?

[Michael]

I've got to the bottom of this as follows:

 

From Powershell, if you enter:

Get-Mailbox -identity [email][email protected][/email] | FL *forward*

It'll output the following example:

 

DeliverToMailboxAndForward : False
ForwardingAddress : i.smith
ForwardingSmtpAddress : smtp: [email protected]

 

The issue (in my case), was the ForwardingAddress line and it can be found as follows:

 

Login as Admin, and scroll down to Exchange (at the bottom left)

 

Select 'recipients' and locate the user e-mail is being re-directed from

 

Select 'mailbox features' then scroll down to 'Mail Flow' and select 'View details'

 

As appropriate add/remove the forwarding from this location, which is different to the smtp forwarder, which is done by the end user themselves. Job done!