How do I send a mail merge campaign using an alias or Send As permissions?

Microsoft 365 allows you to send emails as one of your defined "mail aliases" or on behalf of another user/mailbox ("Send As" permissions).

Step 1. Configuring your account to send as another email address

Your IT administrator needs to configure this before you start sending campaigns with MailMerge365. If you can successfully send an email from your mailbox after changing the "From" address to the alias or mailbox you would like to appear as the sender, then proceed to Step 2.

Option A: Using email aliases

First your IT admin should add email aliases to your mailbox:

1. Open the Exchange Admin Center
2. Under "Recipients" click "Mailboxes" 
3. Select the user you would like to add alias addresses to
4. Click "Manage email address types"
5. In the popup click "Add email address type"
6. Type in the first part of the email alias and select a domain to use.
7. Click OK and then don't forget to also click "Save" until you see the success message.

Then ask them to enable sending as an email alias as follows:

1. Open the Exchange Admin Center
2. Click "Settings" then "Mail flow"
3. Check to enable the setting "Turn on sending from aliases"

Option B: Using Send-As permissions

Ask your IT administrator to perform the following steps:

1. Open the Exchange Admin Center
2. Under "Recipients" click "Mailboxes" 
3. Select the user or mailbox you would like to "Send as"
4. Click the "Delegation" tab and under "Send as" click Edit.
5. In the popup click "Add members"
6. Search for the user that will be doing the sending (or click the user if it is displayed).
7. Click Save and close the popup with the X at the top right.

Step 2. Sending a MailMerge365 campaign with alias functionality

Once the setup described above is complete, you simply have to:

1. Create a new message
2. Ensure your "From" field is pointing to your normal mailbox (not the alias and not a Send-As mailbox)
3. Start the MailMerge365 plugin
4. Then you can change the "From" address to a different email address before sending.

Note about bounced message detection: If you are sending a campaign on behalf of another user or mailbox the replies will go to that mailbox and therefore cannot be picked-up by MailMerge365. There are two ways to get those bounces detected:

• Forward the bounced email messages to your own mailbox (the one that your MailMerge365 account is running on)
• Move the messages from the delegated mailbox to the folder in your Inbox titled "MailMerge365 Bounces". They will be picked up in less than 5 minutes.

Troubleshooting

When I load the plugin the wrong account is loaded (or my account says I don't have a subscription or enough credits to send the campaign).

This happens if you have changed the "From" field before you started the plugin. MailMerge365 uses the "From" field to determine which account to load. If you switch to a different email mailbox that you have permissions for it will try to load that mailbox's account and fail. Before you start the plugin, always select your regular mailbox email address, then start the plugin, and once it is loaded you can change the "From" field to the one you would like to send from.

When I send the message I get an error message saying I do not have the permission to send from this alias or email address.

Please see Step 1 and ask your IT administrator to configure your mailbox. Send a single test message (not a MailMerge365 campaign) first to see if it is configured properly.

Bounced messages are not being picked up or recognized on my campaigns when I send as an alias or another mailbox.

Please see the note about bounced message detection above.