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How assign licenses to staff who work outside of the US and are not in our email domain?

Jim Grant 20 Reputation points
2026-02-10T23:33:25.68+00:00

I work at a US nonprofit foundation, which funds and provides operational support for a birthing center in remote SW Haiti. These are not employees of our foundation, they work for the birth center, but we fund everything they use and do, including purchasing laptops and software for them. I have purchased 10 MS365 licenses, 3 for use in the US (two for me, for my home office laptop and corporate office laptop), and one for my office assistant. 7 licenses are for staff at the birthing center. I have laptops and tablets I want to put the licenses on, but since they don't work for us, they only have their personal email addresses. How can I assign these licenses to their devices?

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Vivian-HT 16,605 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-02-11T03:17:02.8733333+00:00

Dear @Jim Grant,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

I understand your situation since you want to support the external staff. However, regarding your idea of adding personal email accounts as guest users and then assigning Microsoft 365 licenses: this approach isn’t recommended or supported.

Although the admin center may technically allow a license to be toggled on for a guest (B2B) user, guest accounts are intended only for collaboration. They can’t reliably use Microsoft 365 licenses for services like Outlook mailboxes, OneDrive, or Office desktop app activation. For reference: Assign External Users full Office 365 Licenses? and Add and manage B2B collaboration users in the Microsoft Entra admin center

In this case, I recommend you create standard cloud‑only users (for example, using the onmicrosoft.com domain), assign the Microsoft 365 licenses to those users, and then have them sign in on the laptops or tablets you provide. For more information and instruction, please refer to Add users and assign licenses in Microsoft 365

Note: Their personal email addresses can still be used as contact or recovery emails, but the license itself must be assigned to an internal tenant user.

This ensures the licenses work correctly, keeps your setup compliant, and allows Microsoft to fully support the configuration if you ever need assistance.

I agree with you that this would be a very valuable and important feature, especially for organizations like yours that support external staff and partner teams. Therefore, the best way to influence future product improvements is to share this directly with the Microsoft product team. Microsoft actively reviews customer feedback when prioritizing new features and enhancements, especially when multiple customers raise similar requests. You can submit your idea through the Microsoft Feedback Portal, visit https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com‌

Note: As Microsoft Community moderators, please understand that we are not involved in product design decisions and do not have direct access to the development roadmap, we want to assure you that your feedback has been acknowledged and is valued.  

I hope the information shared helps point you in the right direction. If you have any questions or need further clarification, please feel free to reach out.

The first response may not always resolve the issue right away, but with your help and more details, we can work toward a solution.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. I'm looking forward for your reply.

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  1. Vincent Choy 10,960 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2026-02-12T07:07:02.26+00:00

    In the for-profit world, we would term the birth center a subsidiary. The HQ would purchase the licenses (like your 7 licenses), and assign it to the subsidary.

    Now that it has 7 licenses, you will provision a work account with a email account for them xxxx @ birthingcenter.com, and they use that to login and communicate with you for official work. If they leave and someone else assumes the role, you pull the license from them and assign to the new staff yyyy @ birthingcenter.com and so on.

    Regards

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  2. AI answer

    2026-02-10T23:33:39.4966667+00:00

    To assign Microsoft 365 licenses to staff who work outside of the US and do not have email addresses in your domain, you can follow these steps:

    1. Create User Accounts: You will need to create user accounts for the staff at the birthing center. Since they do not have email addresses in your domain, you can use their personal email addresses to create these accounts. This is possible in a cloud-only identity model.
    2. Assign Licenses: Once the user accounts are created, you can assign the Microsoft 365 licenses to these accounts. You can do this either individually through the Microsoft 365 admin center or automatically through group membership if you have set up groups for these users.
    3. Access Microsoft 365 Services: After assigning the licenses, the staff will be able to access Microsoft 365 services associated with the licenses you provided, such as Teams, SharePoint, and other applications.
    4. Device Installation: The staff can install Microsoft 365 on their devices (up to five PCs or Macs, five tablets, and five phones) using their personal email accounts that you used to create their user accounts.

    By following these steps, you can effectively manage the licenses for staff who are not directly employed by your foundation but are using the resources funded by you.

    References:

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