I'm using Outlook 2016 to manage email for a domain that I own. The domain is a catch-all so all email for the domain is delivered into the same mailbox.

I need the ability to change the From: address for outgoing emails. My main account is primary@example.com which is where all email for the domain is delivered. Let's say I want to send an email from sales@example.com, so I'll modify the From: address to sales@example.com for that one email. When the email is received by the 3rd party, the display name shows sales@example.com as expected. The problem, however, is that if you look in the mail headers you see this:

Return-Path: <primary@example.com>


From: <sales@example.com>
Sender: <primary@example.com>

Why does it do that? I need the email address of my primary account to be hidden from everyone I email for security reasons. If I send an email as sales@example.com, it should only show that address in the mail headers.

Presumably, you have multiple accounts in Outlook. In that case, select the appropriate account from the 'From' dropdown.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

No, I only have a single account connected and that account is a catch-all for the domain. I can change the From: address to anything I want but if you dig into the mail headers of email that you send it shows my real account's email address as I explained above.

In that case, you need to attach the sales@example.com email address to the domain, then add that account to your Outlook profile so you can use it in the way described above.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

sales@example.com is not an account and therefore does not have it's own mailbox. primary@example.com is a catch-all for the example.com domain so all email for the entire example.com domain is delivered to that mailbox.



I'm wondering if this there's no way around this and it's set up like this intentionally so that people cannot spoof addresses for malicious reasons. Other mail clients do not behave this way but I wanted to try Outlook.

Put another way, you have to create such an account...

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Creating an account for every email address that I want to send outbound email from defeats the purpose of having a catch-all and is not feasible when you have 50 different email addresses.

The choice is yours.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]