A question about renaming our Azure AD tenant

Question

Hi there, We need to rename our Azure AD tenant to completely get rid of any references to the old business name. This includes Sharepoint and Onedrive links, any references to old business name in the onmicrosoft.com urls and email addresses, and any other references. We need to remove the references from everywhere. I am seeing this article which addresses part of what we need to do: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/change-your-sharepoint-domain-name. Looks like it would change the default onmicrosoft domain with the SPO command, which would change the subdomain name for sharepoint and onedrive to the new business name. However, we need to also remove the onmicrosoft email addresses for users and other objects in Azure AD and need to fully get rid of the <old business name>.onmicrosoft.com domain, but I'm not seeing how to do that in this article. Are the onmicrosoft changes I specify possible w/out creating an entirely new tenant?

Answer 1

@KJ-2073

There is no option to delete the onmicrosoft.com initial domain. You can delete the custom domains which were added to tenant. However, when you sign up for a tenant, there is a an initial domain which gets created and it is with onmicrosoft.com suffix. This domain cannot be deleted from Azure AD. If you have added multiple onmicrosoft.com domains, then those can be deleted and can set other onmicrosoft.com domain as initial domain.

• You can't remove your onmicrosoft.com domain. Microsoft 365 needs to keep it around because it's used behind the scenes for your subscription. But you don't have to use the domain yourself after you've added a custom domain. If you choose to create a new onmicrosoft.com domain, it cannot be removed. You are limited to five onmicrosoft.com domains in your Microsoft 365 environment, so make sure to check for spelling and to assess your need if you choose to create a new one.
• You can replace your onmicrosoft.com domain after sign-up. While you can’t rename or remove an existing onmicrosoft.com domain, you can create a new one and make it your default onmicrosoft.com domain (your “fallback domain”). For example, if the initial domain you chose was fourthcoffee.onmicrosoft.com, if needed you can create a new onmicrosoft.com domain called fourthcoffeecorp.onmicrosoft.com and set it to be your fallback domain.

You can also refer to below article to know more about onmicrosoft.com domains,

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/setup/domains-faq?view=o365-worldwide#why-do-i-have-an--onmicrosoft-com--domain

If you want all users to stop using onmicrosoft.com then then only option is to delete the entire tenant. Post deletion Microsoft waits 30 to 90 days before permanently deleting your data in case you need to access it or you change your mind. We don't charge you for keeping the data.

You can refer to below article to know more about deletion of tenant,

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/enterprise-users/directory-delete-howto#delete-an-azure-subscription

Let me know if you have any further questions on this.

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Answer 2

The feature only affects SPO/ODFB resources, and functionalities that depend on them. It's not a full suite-wide "rename", thus services such as Exchange will continue to rely on the old domain. If you really need to "start clean", your best option would be to provision/migrate to a new tenant, with all the corresponding implications.

Answer 3

Thanks for the confirming @Vasil Michev and @Sandeep G-MSFT !