Renaming Emails

I have a situation where I have to rename several users emails. We had used, in the past, generic email addresses such as:
help@domain.com.

Now we, because of new CRM software etc., we want to change those to an actual name
fred@domain.com.

I want to do this without losing any of the previous emails and use "help@domain.com" as an alias for "fred@domain.com.

Since we are using a hybrid system with Office 365 and Azure, I'm looking for the easiest and safest way to do this.

The user logins for the workstations are the same as the email address, ie "help", so I know I'm going to have to assign new user logins.
I assume I will also have to add a new account to Outlook.

I know that I have left some things out so any ideas would be a big help

Thanks
Kenbg

SoftwareMicrosoft OfficeMicrosoft 365OutlookAzure

Last Comment

Paul MacDonald

8/22/2022 - Mon

Paul MacDonald

11/19/2019

While you could re-purpose the generic mailbox a mailbox for a specific user, it might be better to leave the generic mailboxes generic and simply assign new mailboxes to the users who need them. You could give users access to the generic mailboxes as they need. The advantage of this approach is that someone can "take over" the generic mailbox should someone be on vacation or leave the company. This would amount to creating "fred@domain.com", then giving him (and maybe others) permissions to see the "help@domain.com" mailbox.

If you have no choice but to re-purpose the generic mailboxes, you could simply give them aliases that belong to real people, and give those people permissions to the generic mailbox. In other words, use "fred@domain.com" as an alias for "help@domain.com" rather than the other way around, then give user "fred" permissions to the mailbox.

Ken Graser

11/19/2019

ASKER

Paul,
I had thought of using the new address as the alias "fred@domain.com" but I don't know if I can set that as the default email and send emails from that address. I was thinking that wouldn't work.

The reason I don't want to leave the old generic address is I don't have enough licenses to do that. I could go to the boss and ask him to purchase more, but I'm not sure he would like that.

Thanks
Kenbg

Paul MacDonald

11/19/2019

"I don't have enough licenses to do that"
I hear you. I guess you folks will just have to decide how you want to compromise. At this point, if "help" and "fred" are going to be inextricably entangled, I would keep "help@" and add "fred@" as an alias. This preserves the existing mailbox and all you have to do is give "fred" permissions to it.

If you're going to do anything that involves deleting mailboxes, make backups of your mail stores first.

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William Peck

Ken Graser

11/19/2019

ASKER

Maybe I'll just take a deep breath and ask for more licenses. I like the alias idea but I still don't know if I can make "fred" the primary.

I may just try it on a test machine and see what happens.

I will, for sure, do backups if I have too.

Thanks
Kenbg

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Paul MacDonald

11/19/2019

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Ken Graser