Configure Exchange Server 2013 to Send and Receive Outside EmailMustBeGeek

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After successfully installing Exchange Server 2013, you can now configure the server to send and receive outside Email. To configure Exchange Server 2013 to send and receive outside email, you need to configure, accepted domains, email address policies, send connector and receive connector. We have been working on simple scenario shown below,

Configure Exchange Server 2013 to Send and Receive Outside Email

At first, log in to Exchange Admin Center. Click the Mail Flow feature, in the features pane. This is where all the email send and receive configuration is typically done. The picture shown below shows admin console. In Exchange 2013, lot of settings are configured automatically by the Exchange installation. But it is good idea to explore all the settings individually.

Step 1: Accepted Domains

As you can see in the above snapshot, mustbegeek.com is a default authoritative domain for this Exchange server. This domain is created automatically since this domain is the forest root domain. Now, this configuration means that, if somebody sends mail to xyz@mustbegeek.com then, the email comes to this server. Note:- The MX record of the public domain, mustbegeek.com must point to this server. You might not have same scenario. If your public SMTP name is different then click the ‘+’ symbol to add. For example, if you organization have mailboxes with SMTP name of abc.com then abc.com must be added here.

In my case, the default domain listed is OK. You can view the default domain settings, by double clicking the domain name in accepted domains tab.

Step 2: Email Address Policies

Select email address policies tab to configure email address policies. Email address policies define the style of email IDs that the mailboxes will have. Policy named Default Policy is created by default. By default, the user alias will be set as email address format. This means that if the user has logon name of bgiri@mustbegeek.com then, the email ID will also be bgiri@mustbegeek.com.

If you want different format for user email address then you can define it here. Since default policy is mostly OK. I will leave the default.

Step 3: Receive Connector

Receive connector allows all email to be received by the Mail server. By default, several receive connectors are created. Default frontend connector allows all users from the Internet to send email to this Mail server.

Step 4: Send Connector

Send connector allows emails to be delivered from internal network to the Internet to other domain mailboxes, like gmail, hotmail, etc. By default, no send connectors are configured. So, to configure send connector click send connector tab.

Click add symbol to add new send connector.

Type the name of the Send Connector. Choose Internet on type. Then, click next button.

Choose MX record associated with recipient domain and click next button. This means that, email messages will route via public DNS servers.

Click add symbol to add domains that this server will be able to send emails to.

In FQDN, type asterisk (*). This means that, this email server will be able to send email messages to all recipients out on the Internet. Click save to save the settings.

Review the settings and click next button.

Now add the server that will be used to send email messages. Since we only have one server in our case, I will add it and click OK.

Review the settings and click finish button. Now you will be able to send email messages out on the Internet. But before sending emails, you need to configure user mailboxes and various service URLs.