How do I get rid of the bar in Outlook EMAIL FORWARDING IS ON

Guillaume Jordaan 30

a Bar appears below the top ribbon in Outlook stating: EMAIL FORWARDING IS ON You are forwarding your email to ...

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HSWinMD 5 Reputation points

2026-08-26T18:08:05.46+00:00

Turns out I do have automatic forwarding enabled on one rule, but so what? Just MS being stupid I guess. Give us a way to turn it off, MS!
Hornblower409 18,700 Reputation points

2026-08-27T00:09:20.19+00:00

@HSWinMD said

I do not have automatic forwarding enabled in any of my rules

I don't have the problem, so I can't test. Not enough detailed reports to draw any real conclusions. This is all pure speculation.

One theory is that, if you have any Rules, Outlook is misinterpreting one of those Rule and thinks it's an "All Mail Forward" Rule, when it's really not.
Joel Holcomb 0 Reputation points

2026-08-27T00:11:50.6166667+00:00

All answers I've seen so far say that to disable the notification, simply turn forwarding off. The thing is, I know I have auto forwarding rules set up for this particular account; They are essential to the operation of my organization's email service. It's a pain to have to turn the notification off every time I open Outlook and it seems I should be able to disable the notification permanently without disabling auto forwarding.
AMDMan64 6 Reputation points

2026-08-27T04:37:05.6033333+00:00

Same for me. I have a forwarding rule on for a particular purpose. I'm not going to turn off that forwarding rule just to clear the message.

I understand why they added this banner for security reasons (it's a common tactic to enable forwarding rules on hacked email accounts), but there needs to be a way to turn it off after it notifies me about it once. Do better please Microsoft! AI coding should make this sort of thing easy, but only if the engineers actually understand basic software design...

It's acutally not just an Outlook message either. It's a banner that shows up in outlook.live.com / Hotmail as well.
Joel Holcomb 0 Reputation points

2026-08-29T19:03:18.6+00:00

Although this issue seems to be behind us, I want to mention that during approximately the same period, something kept signing me out of the Microsoft OneNote app on my Android cell phone. Just OneNote, no other Microsoft 365 mobile app. That appeared to be fixed on the same day as the forwarding email issue, but has returned today, only with a different set of symptoms. Now I'm reading on Axios.com that in a recent cyber test of roughly 1200 OpenAI agents, the AI agents cheated and attacked or hacked a large number of companies to get their answers. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I can't help but wonder if this hacking incident didn't have something to do with these two problems.
Hornblower409 18,700 Reputation points

2026-08-29T19:34:27.2666667+00:00

@Joel Holcomb said

something kept signing me out of the Microsoft OneNote app on my Android cell phone ... That appeared to be fixed on the same day as the forwarding email issue, but has returned today, only with a different set of symptoms.

You will probably not get any help for this issue by adding to an existing post on a completely different topic. I would suggest that you start a new thread using the "Ask a question" button at the top of this page to create a new Question and include the details for this specific problem. This provides much higher visibility to your issue than adding on to an existing post, which is only seen by people who are already following this question.

a recent cyber test of roughly 1200 OpenAI agents, the AI agents cheated and attacked or hacked a large number of companies ... wonder if this hacking incident didn't have something to do with these two problems.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I've seen Microsoft pull stunts like this one many times before. No official acknowledgement of the problem, just traffic on the forums, lots of Problem Reports, and then it magically gets fixed.
Joel Holcomb 0 Reputation points

2026-08-29T19:54:22.0133333+00:00

I understand that, Hornblower409. I wasn't trying to post a question about a different topic, merely commenting on the possibility this problem could be linked to other similar issues occurring at the same time, and suggesting a reason for it. I realize no human malice was involved, but since AI getting it wrong was mentioned in the original post, I saw no harm in including a comment about AI here.

And I agree, Microsoft and many other companies have created problems with their software "enhancements," but never officially acknowledge they were at fault.

BTW, the OneNote problem I mentioned has been reported on extensively in other online forums, and I filed a problem report with Microsoft myself a few days ago. :-)
Francis 0 Reputation points

2026-10-28T16:27:04.33+00:00

Sadly AI misses the point. I have had a good number of automatic forwarding instructions for several years and they have always worked fine. The appearance of a new banner to the Outlook Classic email homepage telling me that automatic forwarding is on and a message has been forwarded is - for me - a totally unnecessary nuisance taking up space. I wholly accept that for other users this might be a helpful addition. So the answer should be straightforward - simply provide a means for users to turn it off when they don't want it.
Guillaume Jordaan 30 Reputation points

2026-10-29T06:50:21.2633333+00:00

I re-created ALL my "Automatic Forwarding" rules and deleted the old ones. This removed the RED banner.

Answer accepted by question author

AI answer

That bar appears because automatic forwarding is enabled on the mailbox. To remove it, turn forwarding off.

For Outlook on the web:

Select Settings at the top of the window.
Go to Mail > Forwarding.
Turn off forwarding, then select Save.

For new Outlook for Windows:

Select Settings at the top of the window.
Go to Mail > Forwarding.
Toggle Disable forwarding and select Save.

If forwarding already looks off, check for an inbox rule that is forwarding messages and remove that rule. The Outlook support content also notes that forwarding can be set up in rules.

AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

5 additional answers

Joel Holcomb 0 Reputation points

2026-08-28T20:09:24.0733333+00:00

I am not sure what happened, but as of this morning, I stopped having this issue with Classic Outlook. I have two Microsoft email accounts plus two Gmail accounts setup in Outlook. The second Microsoft account is one connected with a shared instance of Microsoft 365 for families, which I have subscribed to under my primary Microsoft account, and is the one that showed the "Email forwarding is on" alert. Initially, I had no forwarding rules for my primary account, but four forwarding rules for the secondary account.

I added a test forwarding rule to the primary account, and the notification then appeared for the primary account as well as on the secondary account. I cleared the notification for both the primary account and secondary account, restarted outlook, and the notification was gone on both accounts!

I'm not sure this will be of help to anyone else, where this may be a special case with two email accounts connected to Outlook. I'm just glad it's gone, and hope it doesn't reappear.
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HSWinMD 5 Reputation points

2026-08-28T20:45:45.6266667+00:00

I just (Friday 8/28, 4:45 PM ET) re-enabled my forwarding rule and the problem no longer exists. Thanks to whomever fixed this issue. Most appreciated.

ron 10 Reputation points

2026-08-28T23:08:33.4466667+00:00

Ditto here with classic Outlook. Looks like it may have been a server side issue that MS fixed. At least I hope that is the case.