Manage remote domains in Exchange Online (2024)

Remote domains define settings based on the destination domain of each email message. All organizations have a default remote domain named "Default" that's applied to the domain "*". The default remote domain applies the same settings to all email messages regardless of the destination domain. However, you can configure specific settings for a specific destination domain.

The following table shows the default values for common settings:

For information about when to configure remote domains, descriptions of the available settings, and information about how remote domain settings override per-user settings, see Remote domains in Exchange Online.

What do you need to know before you begin?

• Estimated time to complete each procedure: 5 minutes.

• You need permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Mail flow" entry in the Feature permissions in Exchange Online topic.

• To open the Exchange admin center (EAC), see Exchange admin center in Exchange Online. To connect to Exchange Online PowerShell, see Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.

• For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts for the Exchange admin center.

Create and configure remote domains

Use the EAC to create and configure a remote domain

New EAC

1. Go to Mail flow > Remote domains. The Remote domain screen appears.

2. Click + Add a remote domain. The Name the domain screen appears.

3. In the Name text box, enter a descriptive name for the domain.

4. In the Remote Domain text box, enter the full domain name. Use the wildcard character (*) for all subdomains of a specified domain, for example, *.contoso.com.

5. Click Next. The Email reply types screen appears.

6. Define the following settings:

• In the Out of Office reply types section, specify which type of out-of-office replies should be sent to people at this domain.

• In the Automatic replies section, specify whether you want to allow automatic replies, automatic forwarding, or both.

7. Click Next. The Message reporting screen appears.

8. Specify whether you want to allow delivery reports and non-delivery reports by checking the respective check boxes.

9. Click Next. The Text and character set screen appears.

10. Define the following settings:

    • In the Use Rich-text format pane, specify whether to follow each user's message settings, or whether to always or never preserve RTF formatting. Selecting Never means that RTF messages are sent as plain text or HTML.
    • In the Supported Character Set pane, specify which character set to use (if the message doesn't specify the character set) by choosing from the MIME character set or Non-MIME character set drop-down list.

11. Click Next. The Review screen appears.

12. Review the remote domain settings, and click Save.

The new remote domain is created and added to the list.

Classic EAC

1. Go to Mail flow > Remote domains.

2. To create a new domain:

   1. Click New .
   2. In the Name box, enter a descriptive name for the domain.
   3. In the Remote Domain box, enter the full domain name. Use the wildcard character (*) for all subdomains of a specified domain, for example, *.contoso.com.

3. To change settings for the default domain, select Default, and then select Edit.

4. Select the options you want:

   • In the Out of Office reply types section, specify which type of out-of-office replies should be sent to people at this domain.
   • In the Automatic replies section, specify whether you want to allow automatic replies, automatic forwarding, or both.
   • In the Message reporting section, specify:
   • Whether you want to allow delivery reports and non-delivery reports.
   • If a meeting set up by someone on the remote domain is forwarded to another person in your organization, whether the notification message should go to the meeting organizer on the remote domain.
   • In the Use Rich-text format section, specify whether to follow each user's message settings, or whether to always or never preserve RTF formatting. Selecting Never means that RTF messages are sent as plain text or HTML.
   • In the Supported Character Set area, specify which character set to use if the message doesn't specify the character set.

5. Click Save. If you created a new remote domain, it is added to the list.

Remove remote domains

Use the EAC to remove a remote domain

New EAC

1. Go to Mail flow > Remote domains. The Remote domain screen appears.

2. Select a remote domain, and then click Delete .

3. In the warning dialog box, click Confirm. The remote domain is deleted.

Classic EAC

1. Go to Mail flow > Remote domains.

2. Select a remote domain, and then click Delete .

3. In the warning dialog box, select Yes.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to create and configure a remote domain

After you create the remote domain, you can configure the settings (you can't create the remote domain and configure the settings in one step).

Step 1: Create the remote domain

To create a new remote domain, use the following syntax:

New-RemoteDomain -Name "<Unique Name"> -DomainName <single SMTP domain | domain with subdomains>

This example creates a remote domain for messages sent to the contoso.com domain.

New-RemoteDomain -Name Contoso -DomainName contoso.com

This example creates a remote domain for messages sent to the contoso.com domain and all its subdomains.

New-RemoteDomain -Name "Contoso and subdomains" -DomainName *.contoso.com

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-RemoteDomain.

Step 2: Configure the remote domain settings

To configure the settings for a remote domain, use the following syntax:

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity <Name> [-AllowedOOfType <External | InternalLegacy | ExternalLegacy | None>] [-AutoForwardEnabled <$true | $false>] [-AutoReplyEnabled <$true | $false>] [-CharacterSet <SupportedCharacterSet>] [-DeliveryReportEnabled <$true | $false>] [-NonMimeCharacterSet <SupportedCharacterSet>] [-TNEFEnabled <$true | $false>]

This example disables automatic replies, automatic forwarding, and out-of-office replies to recipients at all remote domains that aren't specified with their own remote domain.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Default -AutoReplyEnabled $false -AutoForwardEnabled $false -AllowedOOFType None

This example sends internal out-of-office replies to users at the remote domain named Contoso.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso -AllowedOOFType InternalLegacy

This example prevents delivery reports and non-delivery reports from being sent to users at Contoso.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso -DeliveryReportEnabled $false -NDREnabled $false

This example sends all messages to Contoso using Transport Neutral Encapsulation Formation (TNEF) encoding, rather than MIME encoding. This usage of TNEF preserves Rich Text format in messages.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso -TNEFEnabled $true

This example sends all messages to Contoso using MIME encoding, which means that all RTF messages are always converted to HTML or plain text.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso -TNEFEnabled $false

This example uses the message-format settings the user has defined in Outlook or Outlook on the web for encoding messages.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso -TNEFEnabled $null

This example uses the Korean (ISO) character set for MIME messages sent to Contoso.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso -CharacterSet iso-2022-kr

This example specifies using the Unicode character set for non-MIME messages sent to Contoso.

Set-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso -NonMimeCharacterSet utf-8

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Set-RemoteDomain.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to remove a remote domain

To remove a remote domain, use the following syntax:

Remove-RemoteDomain -Identity <Remote Domain Name>

This example removes the remote domain named Contoso.

Remove-RemoteDomain -Identity Contoso

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Remove-RemoteDomain.