How can I prevent Outlook from modifying rules on startup?

Question

I have two Exchange accounts in Outlook 2010, each hosted on a different server. One of them has a server side rule that forwards incoming emails to the other Exchange account.

However every time I start Outlook, it appears to check this rule and modify it. It notices that the email address that emails are forwarded to is for a local Exchange user, and so it changes it from an SMTP address to an Exchange format address

Eg; the original rule forwards it to an SMTP address such as:

[email protected]

When Outlook starts up, it changes it to an address like:

IMCFACX-_o=First+20Organization_ou=Exchange+20Administrative+20Group+20+28FYA8BOHF23SPDLT+29_cn=Recipients_cn=example@differentdomain.com

The rule then doesn't work, because this address is not valid for the server that is running the rule.

How I can prevent Outlook from modifying this rule when I open it? Or is there an alternative solution to forwarding the emails?

What I have already considered:

• Forwarding the email to an email address that is not set up in Outlook. This address would then forward it onto the other address. However, this would mean each email is handled by three servers, and cause undesirable delay.
• Separating the email accounts into different profiles. Perhaps Outlook wouldn't modify the rule if the other email account was not set up in the profile which has the rule. However, this would be impractical - I want to be able to quickly access the emails in either account. Also overlay the calendars.

Answer 1

If you are accessing one mailbox at a time, you can create two email profiles.

Go to Control Panel > Mail and then click Show Profiles, then you can create an additional profile (probably by copying the existing profile for your case). Each profile should contain only one Exchange account. Please note that profile name is very difficult to change once set-up, therefore give the profile a meaningful name.

You will be asked which profile to work with for each time you start Outlook. Fix the rules for each profile and they should no longer interfere each other.

Note: You will need to restart Outlook to switch profile which could cause inconvenience. You can try it out by creating dummy profiles and see if it is what you prefers.