As there are many question on ‘How can I use Office 365 for hosting email as I have another web hosting provider?’, here is a quick step by step.
The first thing is to logon onto the Office 365 administration portal (https://portal.microsoftonline.com/)
On the left part, go to Management\Domains
Then click on the Add domain button and follow the wizard
Enter your internet domain name and click on the Check domain button; this will ensure this domain has been registered
To continue, click on the Next button
Office 365 add a domain wizard is providing a CNAME record detail to add on your domain; this will ensure you are the owner of this domain. Once you have added this record, wait from few minutes to few hours before being able to validate. For my domains, I had to wait about 15 minutes but it depends of your registrar.
The ALIAS name is specific for you
Once you have added the CNAME record, you can check from time to time by hitting the Verify button or you can close the wizard; if you close the wizard, you will have to relaunch the wizard from the beginning
If DNS has not been updated yet, you have the error ‘CNAME record not found’
If the DNS is up to date, you can continue to next step which consists of configuring DNS
In order to use Office 365 for email hosting ONLY, you just have to configure autodiscover, MX and SPF record accordingly to the information detailed
