Validate company names, customer names, and email addresses

Appropriate roles: Admin agent | Sales agent

This article describes how to validate company names, and your customer primary contact's name and email address in Partner Center. Microsoft requires the customer information to be completed before accepting a partner relationship request or creating a new order through the CSP program. This requirement is part of our commitment to help partners and customers run their business based on trust.

To ensure an efficient customer verification process, confirm that the Global Admin of the customer's tenant can verify accuracy of their account information from the Billing Accounts page, in the Microsoft Admin Center.

Note

Indirect resellers can only request a relationship with an existing customer; they aren't able to add new customers. New customers must be added by an Indirect Provider or Direct Bill partner using the steps in Add a new customer in Partner Center, in the article Add a new customer.

Company name rules

As of early 2024, these validation rules apply:

When you're entering a company name, the following aren't permitted:

• Using only one character
• Using only special characters, such as &$^#. To learn more, see Special characters that are allowed in this article
• Using only spaces and/or tabs
• Using spaces or tabs mixed with individual characters, for example 1 2 3
• Using standalone abbreviations from the restricted list. Examples: LLC or INC. To learn more, see the Abbreviations that are allowed, in this article
• Using the same character repeated three or more times with no other characters, for example 999

The following are required or recommended:

• Total number of characters must be greater than one, and less than 256
• Domain extensions aren't recommended for use in the organization's name

Customer primary contact name rules

When you're entering a customer primary contact's first, middle, or family name, avoid the following conditions to successfully create a customer account:

• Avoid using only one character as part of the contact's first or family name. (Names with only Chinese characters aren't subject to this requirement.)
• Don't use placeholder, testing, or fake names for customer individuals, such as test, admin, or nobody.
• First, middle, and family name should be 40 characters or less.
• Name fields can't contain only numbers, special characters, emojis, or nonprintable characters. To learn more, see Special characters that are allowed in this article.

Email address rules

When entering a customer email address:

• The address can't contain @microsoft.com.
• The address can't contain the same domain name as the partner. For example, a partner called ABC can't create a customer email address ending with @abc.com.

Allowed special characters

Character	Character	Character	Character
~	[	\	.
`	]	\\	:
#	⟨	/	!
+	⟩	-	?
$	{	_	;
@	}	=	^
&	<	'	%
(	>	"	*
)

Allowed abbreviations

Abbreviation	Abbreviation	Abbreviation	Abbreviation
c p a	pty	l. l. c.	gmbh
c.p.a.	pty ltd	l.l.c.	plc
l.l.p.	pte ltd	l l p	wll
c. p. a.	private limited	corp	lda
l. l. p.	pvt	corporation	sarl
l l c	pvt ltd	inc	kft
corp.	zrt	incorporated	ltd
llc.	ooo	limited	ltd.
llp.	llp	llc	sdn bhd