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I ended up in charge of an email migration. My company wants to migrate from their own privately hosted email server to an office 365 server. This is not about saving the old emails on the old server.

What we want to do is turn off the old server and still receive emails to the old address just in case. And we might be in luck, none of the old email addresses look like the new ones, so we had this idea:

Just create duplicates of those email addresses on the new office 365 server and point the DNS server to the IP address. Can anyone estimate the feasibility of this idea at least in the abstract?

Microsoft's admin documentation seem utterly useless. They talk a lot about migrating the data. But I guess I might have overlooked something important. So if anyone can point me to the right documentation, I'd be grateful.

Thank you!

SomeStranger314
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  • If the top-level domains (example.com and example.co.uk, for example) are different then this is trivial, you simply configure your MX records for the new domain to point to Office365 (once you've completed the domain verification TXT, SRV and others DNS records required) and leave the existing domain untouched so that it can continue to receive emails. You'll need to keep the email server on until you deem it suitable to decomission. Although I haven't precisely done this, I've moved to Office365 and it was easy. – Kinnectus Nov 28 '18 at 12:59
  • There is not enough information here to present a solution. Without knowing the email address format no one can help you. Also, you don't (except in very narrowest of circumstances not applicable here) point a domain to an IP address for mail delivery - you use MX records to point to one or more mail server host names. – davidgo Nov 28 '18 at 18:56
  • Thank you for your answers. That aligns with what I suspected and researched. Domain will be moved today, so wish me luck. – SomeStranger314 Nov 30 '18 at 09:43

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You'll need to add the existing email address domain as a verified domain in Office 365 and create/modify your DNS records accordingly. Once complete, email sent to users at their "old" email address will be delivered to their mailbox in Office 365/Exchange Online.

joeqwerty
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