The Easiest and Fail Safe Way to Set Up Scan-to-Email on Your Scanner With Office 365

You just bought a shiny new printer, say an HP, and you want to set up Scan to Email so that when you scan from the multifunction device (printer/scanner), you receive an email with the scanned attachment.

Nowadays, printer manufacturers ship printers with lots of software and often require software to be installed on computers. Installing software on individual machines can be tedious for a small business if you have a bunch of computers.

The usual way to do this is to buy an extra email account and use it. But with two-factor authentication and Office 365 not enabling app passwords by default, it has become more complicated. (I found out the hard way that gmail app passwords don’t work for setting up some HP printers.)

Here’s a quick and easy method that doesn’t get mentioned enough and that many people still don’t know about. It’s called the Microsoft Direct Send method, and it works as long as you have Office 365 licenses. (You’ll not need to buy a new license for this to work.)¹

Stage 1 – Preparation

1. Find your public IP address. Go to whatismyipaddress.com and copy the IP address. For example, your IP might be 1.2.3.4.
2. Find your current MX record for the domain. For example: example-ca.mail.protection.outlook.com.
3. Update your existing SPF record to include your public IP address, like this:

v=spf1 a mx ip4:1.2.3.4 include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all

Stage 2 – Printer setup

4. Go to your printer’s Scan to Email settings. Create a new profile and use the following:
5. Display Name: Choose a name
6. Email address: For example, [email protected] (you do not need a valid mailbox or a paid license)
7. SMTP Port Number: 25
8. Secure connection: None
9. Server Authentication: None (or “Server does not require authentication”)
10. Save and test using a valid email address. You should receive an email into the valid email address.

Benefits of this approach

1. No need to install software on each machine to scan. The whole office/users can use it without any further changes.
2. Even if poeple change computers, they are upgraded or replaced, this works.
3. Will work for multiple Scanner/Multi fuction devices.
4. No password to maintain, never expires.
5. Does not require any license.

Further Reading

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-best-practices/how-to-set-up-a-multifunction-device-or-application-to-send-email-using-microsoft-365-or-office-365

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