Microsoft 365 Adding your own custom domain name to your tenant can be an important step for any company to strengthen your brand and use a professional email address. In this article, we'll walk you through how to add a domain to your Microsoft 365 tenant, step by step, and share important tips.

Microsoft 365 Admin Panel Login

First, you need to log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

• Microsoft 365 Admin Center'to go to admin.microsoft.com You need to open the address.
• Log in with your administrator account. (Global Admin)

Steps to Add Domain for Microsoft 365 Tenant

To show all menus in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, we need to click on the Show all button in the left menu.

After clicking the Show all button, all menus that we can use on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center started to appear.

• Settings – Domains – Add Domain we need to follow the steps.

By default "onmicrosoft.com" domain is added automatically and created specifically for all Microsoft 365 tenants.

Add a Domain In the section, enter the domain name you want to add (for example, yourdomain.com).

Use this domain, with the button Microsoft 365 Domain Verification “Verify that you own your domainWe can move on to the "" section.

Microsoft 365 Domain Verification

In the next step, we need to verify the domain we added.

During the domain verification process, you can verify that the domain belongs to you by choosing one of the following methods:

Microsoft confirms that you own the domain by finding and verifying the file on your website.

Automatic Verification Using Domain Connect:

If your domain registrar uses Domain Connect, Microsoft can automatically set up your DNS records by having you sign in to your registrar and confirm the Microsoft 365 connection. (As seen in the image, since my Name Server records are on CloudFlare, we can perform automatic verification using Domain Connect.)

With this method, you will be returned to the admin center and Microsoft will automatically verify your domain.

Verification Using TXT Record:

You can also verify your domain using a TXT record.

When you choose this method, Microsoft will provide you with a TXT record that you will need to add. You will need to add this record to your domain registrar's website.

After adding the relevant DNS record, the verification process may take up to 30 minutes.

Verification by Adding a Text File to the Website:

Alternatively, you can verify by adding a text file to your domain's website.

Download the .txt file from the setup wizard and upload it to the top-level folder of your website. The path to the file should be: http://mydomain.com/ms39978200.txt.

I "Sign in CloudFlare” I will continue with the step, since CloudFlare supports Domain Connect, it will automatically handle all my DNS forwarding and verification processes. If the Name Server does not support Domain Connect, you need to choose the method that suits you best.

We need to log in to CloudFlare and provide authorization.

After logging in to CloudFlare, it automatically adds the TXT record required for the verification process and shows us the TXT information it will add. We need to continue by clicking Authorize.

After the authorization process, the necessary verification process was performed for the Microsoft 365 Tenant of my cloudguardia.com domain. During this process, Microsoft 365 performs an authorization process for CloudFlare and completes the verification process by automatically adding the required TXT record.

Adding Microsoft 365 DNS Records

We have added and verified the domain for our Microsoft 365 tenant. Now we will need to add the DNS records required for Exchange Online and other services.

We have three options for this process.

• Let Microsoft add your DNS record (recommended): This process requires an Authorize process, as in the DNS verification process, and automatically adds all DNS records (MX, TXT, CNAME, etc.) required for Microsoft 365 services to your DNS provider.
• Add your own DNS records: This process provides a list of DNS records that need to be added, you need to add the records in this list yourself.
• Skip and do this later (not recommended): This process is used to skip this step to add DNS records later.

If you want to add DNS records for Exchange Online, you can follow the articles below.

How to Activate Exchange Online DKIM? – Cengiz YILMAZ (yilmazcengiz.tr)

Enabling Exchange Online SPF, DMARC, DKIM/DKIM2 Records – Cengiz YILMAZ (yilmazcengiz.tr)

I will continue my process with the Let Microsoft add your DNS record step and request that DNS records be added for the following services.

• Exchange and Exchange Online Protection
• Skype for Business
• Intune and Mobile Device Management for Microsoft 365
• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

After selecting the DNS records that need to be added, I open the CloudFlare Authorize screen with the "Add DNS records" button below.

Adding DNS records after the Authorize process takes approximately 2-3 minutes. Once the process is complete, you can complete it with the Done button on the “Domain setup is completed” screen.

When you go to the Settings – Domains section in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center window, you can see the list of domains you have added and if all the DNS records have been added, you can see that the Status section is displayed as Healthy.

In this article, we talked about adding domains to Microsoft 365 services, verifying domains, and redirecting DNS records. See you in another Exchange Online article.