How to Set Up
Microsoft 365

Why Microsoft 365 is Worth the Switch

Microsoft 365 gives small businesses professional email on their own domain, desktop and web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Teams for calls and chat, SharePoint for shared files, and OneDrive for cloud storage — all under one monthly subscription per user. For most small businesses, it replaces a patchwork of separate tools and gives everyone access from any device, anywhere.

1. Choose the Right Plan

For most small businesses the choice comes down to two:

Microsoft 365 Business Basic — includes business email, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and web versions of Office apps. The most cost-effective starting point for teams who mainly work in a browser.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard — everything in Basic, plus the full desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and more, installed on up to 5 devices per user. Best if your team needs to work offline or in heavy spreadsheets.

2. Set Up Your Microsoft Account & Tenant

When you first sign up at microsoft.com, you'll create a Microsoft 365 "tenant" — think of it as your company's private space in Microsoft's cloud. You'll start with a temporary domain like yourcompany.onmicrosoft.com. That's fine for setup, but you'll want to add your own domain in the next step before anyone starts using email.

3. Connect Your Own Domain

In the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre, go to Settings → Domains and add your domain (e.g. yourcompany.co.uk). Microsoft will give you a set of DNS records to add to your domain registrar (wherever you bought your domain name). This usually involves adding MX records (for email), CNAME records (for Outlook and Teams) and a TXT record (for verification). Once those are in place and verified, you can create email addresses on your own domain.

DNS changes can take up to 24 hours to propagate, though in practice it's usually under an hour.

4. Create User Accounts

In Admin Centre → Users → Active Users, add each person in your team. Each user gets an email address, a licence assigned to them, and their own OneDrive storage. You can set up groups (for shared inboxes like info@ or accounts@) here too.

5. Migrate Existing Email

If you're moving from Gmail, another host, or a previous mail provider, you'll want to migrate existing emails across so nothing is lost. Microsoft has a built-in migration wizard for the most common providers. For more complex migrations (large mailboxes, shared calendars, contacts) a third-party tool or a bit of professional help tends to make it cleaner and faster.

6. Set Up Teams, SharePoint & OneDrive

Once users are in place, Teams is available immediately via the web or desktop app. Create channels for your departments or projects, and set up a SharePoint document library for files you want the whole team to access. Each user also gets their own 1TB OneDrive for personal work files that sync between devices.

7. Turn On Multi-Factor Authentication

Before anything else goes live, enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all users — especially the admin account. MFA requires a second step (like approving a notification on your phone) to log in, and it's the single most effective thing you can do to prevent your Microsoft 365 account being compromised. In the Admin Centre, find it under Security → Multifactor authentication.

Want Us to Handle the Setup?

Microsoft 365 setup is something we do regularly for small businesses — we handle domain configuration, user accounts, email migration, Teams setup and MFA, all remotely and usually within a working day.

📞 07414 880356  •  Cloud Services

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