0203 070 2465

After setting up some clients on Office 365 for Professionals and Small Businesses and both of them having their domains hosted by 1and1 under a business package, we thought it would be helpful to share some tips and suggested best practice in that environment.

It is worth pointing out that you may want to take a simpler approach to getting email transferred from 1and1 to Office 365.  The instructions here will basically set everything up so when someone sends an email to your 1and1 domain it will send that mail to Office 365.  If no email address exists in Office 365 for that sent address, the sender will get a undelivered reply.  Effectively the email addresses in 1and1 become redundant even if they can be seen in the control panel.

If you have only 1 or 2 Office365 licences but many 1and1 email addresses you may prefer to use forwarding and this is explained in the blog entry entitled Using Office 365 with a 1and1 domain name - To Forward or Transfer Email ?

These instructions assume you know your way around the 1and1 control panel and the office 365 portal.  The instructions here (Part 2) will allow you to actually receive email into username@yourexistingdomain.something within your Office 365 space when your domain is still hosted by 1and1.  We will be working with MX records.

Here are the steps we took AFTER taking the steps in Part 1 of this blog:

• Firstly go to portal.microsoftonline.com and click on Admin at the top of the screen

• From the menu on the left click Domains then click on the domain you set up in Part 1

• Click on DNS manager at the top of the screen.  Look for the record that has a type of MX and look for the "Points to address" value.  It should look something like <yourdomain>.mail.eo.outlook.com.  Record or remember this value

• Go into your 1and1 control panel and into the domain administration part

• Tick the box next to the domain that you have previously transferred and select EDIT SETTINGS from the DNS button at the top of the list of domains

• Leave the name server as 1and1 name server but set Mail Exchanger (MX-Record) : to OTHER MAIL SERVER

• In the MX1/Prio box enter the value you remembered above in the "Points to address" value which should look like <domainname>.mail.eo.outlook.com andc in the priority box enter 1

• Press OK to save.  After about 1-2 days you will receive email into Office 365.  Remember that if you have been using 1and1 pop email you will still need to pop that email for a couple of days

Good Luck !!!