How to get a new Microsoft 365 tenant name

You probably remember that when we first signed up for Microsoft 365, there was a form/wizard that asked us for essential information to create our tenant. The Microsoft 365 tenant is the environment that groups all the configurations, users, data, subscriptions and licenses, administration centers, and consequently, the set of services assigned to the organization.

During the process of creating the Microsoft 365 tenant, this will be assigned to a specific geographic location depending on the region where the company we are registering is located. Depending on special needs and meeting a series of requirements, we could have a tenant in various geographic locations as I mentioned in another article, or even move it to another region. And there is a point in the wizard that will ask us to create the name of the tenant, tenant_name.onmicrosoft.com This is extremely important information, because it will be a unique and unrepeatable name, and it will "always" be with us!

Of course we can use as many custom domains as we want for key services like email, but the tenant's name will still be visible in the URL for services like SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business.

If we weren't careful with our tenant name choice, it was generated by a third party, or if the organization has gone through a rebrand, merger, or acquisition, it makes sense that we'll need to rename the SharePoint and OneDrive URLs. Now we can do it with PowerShell!

Get a new tenant name without having to migrate!

First of all, I want to make it clear that actually, technically the tenant can NOT be renamed, but now we have a new feature in preview that allows us to create a new tenant name and set it as default, this will create a transparent and permanent redirect (does not expire) to the previous tenant name, which I assure you will allow you to achieve the desired result.

This change only affects SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business URLs. It does not affect email addresses.

IMPORTANT:

This new feature is not yet available for organizations with more than 10K SharePoint sites and OneDrive accounts combined. If your organization does not meet these requirements, you will receive a 773 "Not Implemented" error. I recommend that you come back later, since it is in the implementation phase. It is also not available for organizations with Multi-Geo configuration, nor for M365 PS GCC customers High and DoD.

This name change only affects SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business URLs. It does not affect email addresses. You can only change the name once every six months, and most importantly, this process is irreversible, that is, we will not be able to go back to using the SharePoint/OneDrive domain that we used previously.

Please check this link for the impact of changing the tenant's name!

Let's go ahead!

In the process I will accompany you with an example. My current tenant name is M365B878680.onmicrosoft.com, and I want it to be danialonsoms.onmicrosoft.com. So my SharePoint URL will be danialonsoms.sharepoint.com, and my OneDrive will be danialonsoms-my.sharepoint.com.

Step 1. Check the availability of the new tenant name

The first step is to check if the name we want is available, for this we can try simply entering the desired Sharepoint.com address in the browser, or do it by ping.

• Option 1: Enter the url, in my case https://danialonsoms.sharepoint.com, if it returns a 404 error, it means that the desired name is available. If otherwise it sends you to the login page, the name is not available, and you should try a different name.
• Option 2: From CMD, ping the domain, in my case ping acme.sharepoint.com. If it tells you that the ping couldn't find the host, great! This can be your new tenant name. If the ping is otherwise unsuccessful, try a different name.

If the new name we want use, is already used by another of our tenants, we must previously delete that tenant in Azure AD. Deleting a tenant will take around 3 days to complete. Once removed, the domain will be available to use.

Step 2. Add a new domain name

Let's go to this link. Logging in with our tenant administrator account.

And we click to add the new desired tenant name with “onmicrosoft.com”, for example, in my case “danialonsoms.onmicrosoft.com”. Then mark this new domain as primary.

Let's make sure that the domain we have added is shown as “Verified”, and that the new domain remains marked as "Primary".

Step 3. Make the domain change

First of all, we need to have the latest version of SPO Management Shell installed. You can download and install it from this link.

Now we open Windows PowerShell with administrator privileges to connect to our tenant, using the original name. In my case:

Connect-SPOService -Url "https://M365B878680-admin.sharepoint.com"        

We will have to authenticate with our administrator account.

Now we execute the following command to specify the new domain name

Start-SPOTenantRename -DomainName “DomainName” -ScheduledDateTime “YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS”        

• In “DomainName” you must specify the new tenant name.
• In “ScheduledDateTime” you must specify the date on which you want the change to take place. At least within 1 day, and at most within 30 days. Preferably use a schedule of minimum activity.

For example, in my case:

Start-SPOTenantRename -DomainName "danialonsoms" -ScheduledDateTime "2022-12-10T20:00:00"        

We review the parameter, and if everything is correct, we confirm with a "Yes to All".

Once is time to execute the task, the tenant name change process will begin, and if everything has worked well, we will have our new tenant name working correctly!

I hope this guide has been useful for you, if you need additional information, you can access this official link on our Microsoft documentation page, where we detail these steps and will update with news.