How to Move Office 365 Domain to another Account – An Ultimate Guide

Office 365 is a world-wide platform, which is filled with advanced features and functionality. But, it does not provide an option to transfer domain from one Office 365 account to another. However, according to the current survey, it is found that most of the organizations want to take over another. But, transfer of employees to the new organization is the main concern of the employers. If talking about the migration, then the primary thought is to transfer all the current Office 365 accounts and mailboxes of users into a single Active Directory. This can be performed by using the Active Directory domain services for consolidation. If both the organizations are using Office 365, then they can easily move Office 365 domain to another account. In this write-up, we will provide both manual and automatic solution for migration of Office 365 accounts.

Method # 1: Manual Way to Migrate Data between Two Office 365 Accounts

In order to manually move the data from one Office 365 account to another, you need to perform the two-step procedure that is given below:

Step 1: Make a Proper Plan before Migrating Office 365 Domain to another Account

Appropriate planning should be done before performing migration of domain from one Office 365 account to another. Internet connectivity must be strong and consistent for migration. There are some certain steps that you need to follow:

  • Firstly, get additional Office 365 licenses to include the additional employees being added to the organization.

  • After that, make sure to have administrative rights on both Exchange Admin Console of the source & destination account.

  • Now, set up the Azure AD Connect tool. This will be utilized to match up all items between source and target Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). One needs to confirm the synchronization by checking all computers of new employees.

  • On the other hand, add a CSV file with names of all new accounts and passwords. And afterwards, upload this file to Exchange Admin Console of the organization that acquired by the other.

  • Now, check whether the new domain is created for the new employees. Now, the new employees will have accounts for both the new and the old organization.

  • Before going further, plan properly by making a CSV file of all the mailboxes that is required to be moved.

  • Likewise, change the Time to Live(TTL) in DNS of the primary domain to a smaller number. One can go as low as up to five minutes.

  • In the final step, go to the Exchange administrator center of the old organization and disable directory sync.

  • Finally, inform the new employees about the details of the transfer process and the time period involved.

Step 2: Move Office 365 Domain to another Account

Perform the following steps to transfer office 365 mailbox to another account:

  • Initially, you need to change the MX record on the old id to an inaccessible email address. This will shift any incoming emails to an unknown address. A Non-Delivery Report (NDR) will be delivered to all incoming email senders while the change process is in progress.

  • At the source End: This includes removing the domain name of the old organization from all frameworks still utilizing it before they can be moved to the new organization domain.

  1. Reset all Office 365 mailboxes of the old organization to the initial domain name.

  2. Remove any secondary domains being used by employees.

  3. Now, set the primary domain to be used as the default domain to route emails

  • At the Destination End: Wait for an hour after eliminating the old domain name from the new employee accounts. Then, follow the steps below to guarantee that the new domain has been set for all new employee accounts:

  1. In the Exchange admin panel for new accounts, set the auto discovery of CNAME optional.

  2. Next, activate new mailboxes by providing each new employee account with Office 365 mailbox license.

  3. Now, set the email domain of the new organization as the primary domain for all the new accounts.

  4. Now, set passwords for every new account. And provide the new credentials to the new employees added to the organization.

  5. Once the new mailboxes are authorized and dynamic, set the MX record of old accounts to point to the new organization domain name. This way all the new approaching emails to the old mailbox will now be routed to the new empty mailboxes.

  6. At last, test whether the new mailboxes are able to send or receive data.

This whole procedure may take days or even weeks time to move user from one domain to another office 365 domain. Keep the new employees and higher ups in-loop about the progress of the migration process. Move only weeks of mailboxes at a time. This will keep the work going for the new experts added to the company.

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Method # 2: Alternative Method to Transfer Domain from One Office 365 Account to Another

The above discussed manual approach is too long and tedious task to perform. Thus, people are searching for a solution to easily move from one domain to another in Office 365. There are numerous tools available in the online market. Office 365 express Migration Tool is one of the best solutions that can move Office 365 domain to another account in an easy and fast way. The best part of this utility is it is simple and user-friendly. In addition, it provides an option to pause and resume the conversion process in between. The software has also the facility to maintain the data integrity same as original account.

Bottom Line

In this blog, we have discussed how to move Office 365 domain to another account. But, manually it is very difficult to perform the complex and lengthy conversion method. So, in order to overcome the problem, we have also discussed an alternative solution like Office365 express Migration Tool to transfer domain from one Office 365 account to another account quickly. This solution is a hassle-free and helps to transfer data from Office 365 account to another account.


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