I have M365 Family and a domain name not on GoDaddy

Thank you for help Karl.

The one piece of information that I was missing the unique identifier for my M365 Family account. Here is how I got it to work.

1. If you have no reason to NOT USE GoDaddy then use GoDaddy. It is just easier. Continuing a registrar other than GoDaddy is only for the computer grease monkeys.
2. If you do prefer your registrar then it is possible, after all, it is all about the DNS. Here is how.

a. Find a deal on a cheap GoDaddy domain. I got one for 99 cents and I used a throw away domain name, e.g. "test12345.family"

b. Once you have purchased it on GoDaddy, turn off the auto-renew so that GoDaddy does not renew the domain after you have forgot about it.

c. Go to Outlook.com and sign in.

d. Click on the Manage Premium diamond and tell it you want a personalized email address

e. Tell it use the existing GD domain that you just created for 99 cents.

f. On success, login to GoDaddy and manage your domain. You should see the following 5 records. Note the MX and the TXT "_outlook" records. The number is your unique id: 13832XXXX

g. Enter the domain records into your registrar. They are all necessary. _domainconnect appears to make it all easy.

h. Now go back to outlook.com and Premium > Personalized email address.

i. Remove your throw away domain.

j. Tell to personalize your email again and enter the domain name that you want. It will say that it found a GoDaddy domain.

k. When ready, setup your email.

Hope this helps someone.

I will loose 2 years of domain payment if I transfer the domain.

Hi Karl,

There has to be away to set the DNS records manually. I am capable, I am just missing small pieces of information.

David

I can only provide the information applicable to the question as outlined by Microsoft.

To move your domain over to an Exchange based server without changing domain registrars would require subscribing to a hosted Exchange account but it's not possible with a Microsoft 365 consumer subscription

Just so there is no misunderstanding, this is a public user-to-user support forum. We're users just like you helping other users. We do not work for Microsoft and have no input on Microsoft's policies, procedures, or design decisions.

@puppydawgy I noticed that the URL for the GoDaddy "Domain Connect" page contains:

"mxRecordValue=123456789"

Where "123456789" is possibly one's MX record number. So, probably no need to buy the cheap temporary domain name --just copy the "mxRecordValue" number in the URL. This could probably replace 'step e' in your above instruction. I'll let you confirm that it is the same thing.

URL example: (what to look for) https://domainconnect.godaddy.com/v2/domainTemplates/providers/outlook.com/services/personalizedoutlookemail/apply?mxRecordValue=123456789&state=00000000000000000000000000000000&redirect_url=https%3A%2F%2Foutlook.live.com/mail/LaunchDomainConnectNextStep.html

I haven't yet tried your setup steps as I'm not quite ready to pull the plug on my Google Suite service.