Work with domain names and DNS records in Office 365

Article
07/22/2014

When your company signs up for Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, you’re given an initial domain name that looks like the following: contoso.onmicrosoft.com. In this example, contoso is the name that you chose when you signed up. As an administrator, you can add your own domain names for your company to use with the services as well, or remove domains that you’ve added previously.

Tip

To manage your domains, on the Admin page, in the left pane, click Domains. On the Domains page, you can view and manage the domains associated with your account.

About your onmicrosoft.com domain

You can use your contoso.onmicrosoft.com domain with most Office 365 services. For example, you can use the domain with Microsoft Exchange Online and Lync to create sign in accounts and distribution lists.

You cannot, however, host SharePoint Online on a onmicrosoft.com domain. SharePoint Online can only be hosted on your SharePoint domain, such as contoso.sharepoint.com, or with a custom domain, such as www.contoso.com, that you add to Office 365. For more information about using your own domain name with SharePoint Online, see Use a custom domain name for your SharePoint Online public-facing website address.

If you add your own domain names to Office 365, you can continue to use your onmicrosoft.com domain.

Note

After you choose the name to use with Office 365 during signup, such as contoso.onmicrosoft.com, you cannot change the name.

Use your own domain in Office 365

If you want your hosted email or other services to use a domain that you own rather than the one you were given at signup, you can add the domain to Office 365. After you add the domain to Office 365 and Office 365 verifies that you own it, you can set up email, create Lync Online accounts with the domain, create distribution lists that include the domain, and use the domain for your SharePoint Online hosted website. For more information, see Options for adding your domain to Office 365.

Important

: You must own a domain name before you can add it. If you don’t yet own the domain name that you want to add, register the domain by using a domain registrar.
: You cannot add domains that you’re already using in Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite.
: Before you can verify a domain that you’ve added, you must have the sign-in credentials for your domain registrar or host, unless the name server for your domain is on premises. If you don’t remember your domain registrar, see Locate your domain services or buy a new domain.
: Using Windows PowerShell cmdlets is not generally supported with Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses. However, there are a few situations when you may need to use Windows PowerShell. For example, someone in Support might recommend using a Windows PowerShell cmdlet to help fix a problem.

If your company is already using your domain name to send and receive email, and you want to use that domain with Microsoft Exchange Online, you can connect your email addresses to your cloud-based account. For more information, see Learn About Connected Accounts.

About domain status

On the Domains page, you can view the status of each of your domain names in Office 365. The following table lists the status options for domains.

Status	Definition
Click to verify domain	The domain has been added to your account, but Office 365 has not yet verified that you own the domain. You cannot use the domain with any of the services until verification is complete. Click the status to go verify your domain, or for more information about verification, see Options for adding your domain to Office 365.
Active	The initial onmicrosoft.com domain that is created when you open your account has this status.
Verified	The domain has been successfully added and Office 365 has verified that you own it.
Pending deletion	Office 365 has started removing the domain, but the removal process isn’t complete, or there is an issue with removing the domain. For more information, see the section later in this article: Remove a domain.

If your domain status is Verified but you still aren’t receiving email on the domain in Office 365, try troubleshooting the problem. For more information, see Troubleshoot issues after changing your domain name.

Change the default domain name

After you add your domain to Office 365, you can change the default domain for new email addresses. To do this, follow these steps.

On the Admin page, in the top left corner, click your company name.
Click Edit.
Choose a new default domain, such as the custom domain that you added.

Add or modify custom DNS records for your domain

After you add your domain to Office 365, you can add or change custom DNS records for the domain in Office 365 by doing the following.

On the Admin page, in the left pane, under Management, click Domains.
On the Domains page, select a domain name, and then click Manage.
On the DNS manager tab, click New to add a custom DNS record, or click Edit to make changes to a custom DNS record you already have.

Note

The DNS manager tab also lists DNS records for Office 365 that you cannot edit or remove. For example, you can view but not change the records listed under the heading DNS records for Microsoft Office 365.

Remove a domain

Before you remove a domain, consider the following:

The original onmicrosoft.com domain name that you chose originally for your account, similar to contoso.onmicrosoft.com, can’t be removed.
Before you can remove a domain, you must first remove the domain from all user, email, or Office 365 accounts associated with the domain. You can remove all of the accounts, or you can bulk edit user accounts to change their domain information and email addresses. For more information, see Create or edit users and Add multiple users with bulk import.
If you are hosting a SharePoint Online site on a domain that is being used for a SharePoint Online site collection, you must delete the site collection before you can remove the domain.

To remove a domain, follow these steps.

On the Admin page, in the left pane, under Management, click Domains.
On the Domains page, select the domain that you want to remove, and then click Remove.
On the Remove domain page, click Yes.

If your domain can’t be removed at this time, the domain’s status is shown as Pending removal on the Domains page. If this status persists, try again to remove the domain. For more troubleshooting suggestions, watch the following video: Troubleshooting Removing Domains in Office 365. To track down the cause of a specific error number, see the information in You receive an error message when you try to remove a domain from Office 365.

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