After signing up, you will land on the Office 365 admin panel. From here you need to visit Setup » Domains page to add your custom domain.
This will bring you to the domains settings page. Go ahead and click on the ‘Add domain’ button to continue.
On the next screen, you will be asked to enter the domain name you want to setup. After entering the domain name, click on the next button to continue.
Office 365 will now look up your domain name and then ask you to verify ownership by adding information to your domain’s DNS settings.
To do this, you will need to switch back to your domain’s settings page. Depending on your domain registrar, this page will be located under your account. You need to find the DNS settings option.
If your domain is registered by your WordPress hosting company, then you will find the domain’s setting under your cPanel dashboard labeled as ‘Zone Editor’ or ‘DNS Zone Editor’.
When adding a DNS record, make sure that the information you enter matches the information displayed by Office 365.
Once you have pasted the DNS record, click on the ‘Add DNS record’ button to save your changes.
Next, you need to switch back to Microsoft Office 365 admin portal and click on the verify button.
Office 365 will now check for DNS record to verify that you own the domain name. DNS verification can take 5 – 10 minutes because sometimes your DNS is not updated right away.
After verification, you will be asked to manage your online services.
You will get two options here: the first is to automatically allow Office 365 to make required changes to your DNS settings, and the second option is to manually manage your DNS records.
Otherwise, choose the second option to manually manage your DNS records.
Once you have made the selection, click on the next button to continue.
Office 365 will now ask you which service you want to configure. Right now we just want to setup Exchange to use the business email address service.
Click on the next button to continue.
Exchange needs three DNS records to work. You will be able to see them on the next screen.
Once again, you will need to go to your domain’s DNS settings page and add these records individually.
Here is what each of these DNS records does.
First, you have an MX record, which provides instruction on where to deliver the email messages. After that, you have a TXT record, which helps prevent someone from spoofing your email to send spam. Lastly, you have a CNAME record which let’s software like Outlook discover and connect to an email service.
Now if your website already had an MX record, then it would be replaced with this one. This makes sure that you can use Outlook’s mail servers to send and receive emails from your custom domain email address.
Once you have entered all DNS records, click on the verify button. Office 365 will now check your domain DNS settings. If everything is in the order, then you will be redirected back to the domains page.
You have successfully setup your domain name to work with Outlook.
You are now ready to create your custom domain email address using Outlook.com.
Adding Custom Branded Email Address in Outlook.com
From your Office 365 dashboard, go to Users » Active Users and then click on Add a user button.
On the next screen, you need to provide the user’s personal information and then choose an email address for them.
Next, click on the add button to save your settings.
You can now login using the email address and password you created in the earlier step to use your new professional branded email with Outlook.com.
