How to set mailboxes to forward and save a copy in Exchange 2010

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 by Andrew Kuhlmann (See all posts by Andrew Kuhlmann)

As an Exchange 2010 administrator a common request is for a mailbox to exist for forwarding purposes, but also to reserve a copy of any received email in the mailbox.

Achieving this is simple when you’re using the Exchange management console. Simply edit the mailbox properties and click the mail flow tab, delivery options, and use the GUI to input values.

However when editing this using PowerShell commands isn’t immediately obvious due to the confusing names given to mailbox properties by Exchange.

See example code:

$mailboxID = “example.local/Microsoft Exchange Hosted Organizations/example.com/John Smith”
$ForwardingAddress = “johnsmith@contoso.com”
set-mailbox -identity $mailboxID -forwardingsmtpaddress $ForwardingAddress -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true

This requires two input variables. The ID of the mailbox, found using the get-mailbox cmdlet… And the address to which email should be forwarded. The “DeliverToMailboxAndForward” property gets changed to $true which will enable sending a forward as well as keeping a copy.