Microsoft 365: The new Opt-out Setting to Disable Plus Addressing in Exchange Online
Plus Addressing allows users to create custom email address by adding plus (+) sign and suffix to their standard email address. For example,
Standard email address: [email protected]
Plus Addresses: [email protected], [email protected]
When the emails are sent to Plus Addresses, the emails are delivered to the standard email address.
In Sep 2021, Microsoft introduced Plus Addressing in Exchange Online as an opt-in option. The organizations can enable plus address by setting the ‘AllowPlusAddressInRecipients‘ property using Set-OrganizationConfig cmdlet.
Later Aug 2021, Microsoft announced that they would turn on Plus Addressing by default for all customers from Jan 2022.
‘Enabling Plus addressing by default’ got mixed reviews from Exchange admins for the following reasons.
- Few organizations want to restrict their users to utilize Plus Addressing.
- As few organizations use the plus sign (+) in their standard email, it will affect the mail flow and delivery.
After getting such feedbacks, Microsoft decided to implement a new setting to allow admins to disable Plus Addressing before the change takes place. By using the DisablePlusAddressInRecipients setting, admins can proactively opt-out of the feature ‘enable plus addressing by default’ within a 30-day notice period.
Action required by 17 Apr 2022
To opt-out of Plus Addressing, you must connect to the Exchange Online PowerShell session and run the following cmdlet.
Set-OrganizationConfig -DisablePlusAddressInRecipients $true
The setting will start to work from mid-April after the 30-day notice period. It will remove the old ‘AllowPlusAddressingInRecipients’ setting and enable plus addressing for all the tenants unless they are opt-out.
Conclusion:
If you don’t disable plus addressing, your organization users will be able to use plus address once the feature is enabled by default. To avoid Plus Addressing becoming available to users, admins must set the ‘DisablePlusAddressigInRecipients’ setting to True within Apr 17, 2022.
