Call Forwarding on Office Phone: How to Set It Up and Turn It Off

Forwarding instructions are not universal. The same provider can sell several phone products with different codes or portal steps, so guessing can waste time or activate the wrong feature. Check your monthly bill, your provider's welcome email, or the label on your desk phone to find the exact product name.

• Traditional landline or digital voice lines usually use star codes dialed from the desk phone itself.
• Hosted or cloud phone systems often manage forwarding in a web dashboard or admin portal instead.
• Wireless-based business lines use their own codes, which differ from landline codes.
• If your office uses a phone system admin, ask them before changing forwarding yourself, since some features are administrator-controlled.

Many office landline services use the same basic pattern: *72 to activate, *73 to deactivate. Dial *72, wait for a second dial tone or a prompt, then dial the 10-digit destination number. A confirmation tone, beeps, or the destination phone answering tells you forwarding is on.

• Verizon business landline: dial *72 and follow the activation instructions; dial *73 from the same line to deactivate.
• Optimum Business Phone: dial *72, wait for dial tone, then dial the destination. If the call is busy or unanswered, press the flash or hook switch, dial *72 again, and redial the destination; two beeps and dial tone confirm. Dial *73 to turn it off.
• AT&T Phone for Business: dial *72, the destination, then # for all calls; dial *73# to turn off. No-answer forwarding uses *92 and *93, and busy forwarding uses *90 and *91.
• Frontier Unlimited Digital Voice: lift the handset, dial *72, wait for the second dial tone, enter the destination, and listen for confirmation. Dial *73 to disable.
• Comcast Managed Voice (Panasonic TPA65 guide): lift the handset, dial *72 and the destination, then hang up. Dial *73 to disable.
• C Spire publishes *72 plus the 10-digit destination to activate and *73 to deactivate for its all-call forwarding.

Cloud and hosted office phone systems usually handle forwarding in a dashboard rather than with star codes. You sign in, pick your phone number or extension, and set the forwarding destination and condition there.

• Spectrum Business Voice: sign in at SpectrumBusiness.net with a role allowed to manage voice, open Voice, choose the phone number, then Voice Settings or Forwarding Manager, enable forwarding, and choose all calls or busy/no-answer with a destination.
• Vonage Business Communications: select Call Forwarding and enable Forward Calls to a phone number.
• Windstream OfficeSuite UC: use the WE Connect Dashboard's My Call Forwarding widget to set immediate forwarding to another phone number, or set a ring count and destination for unanswered calls.
• Comcast Business Voice Mobility includes call forwarding and remote call forwarding, managed through My Account or the Comcast Business App, depending on your subscribed services.
• Astound's legacy Business Phone with Call Manager uses a Forwarding tab with immediately-forward and busy/no-answer options, plus *72 and *73 on the handset.

After activating forwarding, place a test call from an outside phone, such as a personal cell phone, to your office number. Confirm the call rings or connects at the destination the way you expect. Keep in mind that all-call forwarding sends every incoming call away from the desk phone, so the desk line will not ring until you deactivate it.

• Deactivate with *73 from the same office line on most star-code systems, or by switching forwarding off in your provider's portal.
• Some providers let you store a forwarding destination online so you do not have to reenter it each time.
• On Optimum Business Phone, forwarding the primary line overrides hunt groups, and activation is done by phone while hunting is active.
• If a test call does not forward, verify you dialed the correct code for your exact product and that the feature is included on your account.

If you do not see your provider above, do not borrow another company's codes. Conditional forwarding codes in particular (busy, no-answer, unreachable) vary by carrier and product, and a wrong code may simply fail or activate the wrong feature. Contact your provider's business support or search their help center using the exact product name from your bill.

• Ask support two questions: does my line support call forwarding, and what are the activation and deactivation steps for my exact product?
• For wireless business lines, forwarding is often set from the handset's call settings menu or with carrier short codes, and support can vary by area and device.
• Some features, such as no-answer or busy forwarding, may require adding a feature to your plan before they can be activated.

Forwarding is also how you point your existing office number to a 24/7 answering service. With AllDayDesk, you keep your public business number and forward calls to the service; the exact forwarding instructions depend on your phone service, which is why identifying your provider first matters. Setup starts by choosing your business or entering its website, checking the business details AllDayDesk found, hearing a personalized sample of how your calls would be answered, and then choosing your phone setup option. The sample does not create a real booking.

• Once connected, calls, transcripts, summaries, and bookings show up in your AllDayDesk dashboard.
• New appointments are booked on the built-in AllDayDesk dashboard calendar by default, after you configure your services and availability.
• An optional Google Calendar connection is available in Settings after you connect and authorize your Google account.
• Changes to existing appointments are sent to you as requests, not confirmed changes.
• When the answer, price, or appointment time is unknown, the service takes a message instead of guessing.
• Call transfers to you require you to configure a destination and rules; pickup is not guaranteed.