Plus addressing is a useful feature supported by many email systems. It has been enabled by default in the Microsoft 365 Exchange Online service since May of last year.

In short, plus addressing allows you to extend your basic email address by adding a “+” sign and a custom tag of your choice.

For example, if your email is abelincoln@smr.us you can create variations like abelincoln+shopping@smr.us or abelincoln+politics@smr.us. By using these addresses when you sign up for various services, newsletters, at shopping sites, etc., you can accomplish several useful things:

• Organizing. You can easily categorize your received emails by topic or purpose.
• Filtering. You can set up filters to move emails sent to different plus addresses to different folders within your email inbox.
• Tracking. If you receive spam emails to specific plus addresses you can get a sense of where your email may have been shared without your knowledge.

Note that you cannot send from plus addresses that you create, only receive. Give it a try today!

P.S. Thank you Northeastern University Information Technology Services for suggesting this topic.