Migrating your POP email to Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft and many other suppliers are moving away from basic authentication to make accounts more secure. Microsoft is our email supplier so this change will affect our BT Business customers who use a POP service.

Check list

To continue to use your domain email within a mail client such as Microsoft Outlook or MacMail, you’ll need to migrate your email address from POP to an Office 365 Exchange service.

You must have:

• an existing domain email address (@yourdomain.com) with BT, not @btconnect.com
• access to your BT account
• access to your Domain Management Console
• access to your Business Apps Account
• backed up all existing emails currently held within your email client.

Any emails that exist only on mobile devices could be lost. Make sure you forward any important ones to another address if you need to keep them. We can’t be held responsible for any loss of data when using these instructions, but we’ll try to help you if you run into any problems.

Managing your domain

Is your domain hosted by us?

1. Log into My Account using your primary user account.
2. Select Manage Services then Manage Domain to manage your DNS.

Need our help?

Get help to manage the domain.

Domain hosted by another provider?

If your domain isn’t hosted by us, you’ll need to use your provider’s domain portal to make DNS changes.

What you need to do

Setting up the BT App store

• Log into the BT Marketplace using your primary user account that manages your services and bills in My Account.
• Order the Microsoft Office 365 licences you need.
• Make a note of your .onmicrosoft.com admin user details. You’ll need them to manage your new Microsoft 365 account and setup email.

Existing domain email address

If your domain is already being used for emails via BT/Microsoft Platform, then its already part of an existing BT-managed Microsoft account. You’ll need to back up all your data and remove it from the current tenant to be able to transfer the existing mailboxes. You also need to remove all existing @domain email addresses and the domain name itself.

Emails in MacMail and Outlook for Mac are in a section called ‘On My Mac/Computer’.

POP email accounts running within Windows Outlook use a .pst file stored within the computer’s hard drive, not within Outlook itself.

1. Find the file and create a copy to secure your data.
2. Back up your data and remove all associated @domain email address from the BT portal by going to Manage Services then Manage Email. For more help doing this, go to our help article.
3. Remove each email address mailbox @domain. Removing the last one triggers a domain removal request to Microsoft automatically, freeing it up for you to add to your new tenant.

Building your Microsoft 365 email addresses

Setting up your email addresses in the admin portal

1. Log into the Microsoft 365 Admin portal with your admin user details.
2. On your first admin user sign-in, a prompt will appear asking you to change your password and set up two-factor authentication.
3. Add your Domain to your new tenant.
4. Add a text record within manage services/domain to verify your domain ownership (the required txt record will appear during the domain setup on the Microsoft portal). Once verified, you’ll be asked to add the remaining DNS records.
5. Add your required users/email address within the new tenant@domain.

Once the email addresses have been successfully added to Microsoft 365, you can begin setting it up on your computer.

Setting up your Exchange account

Adding the new mail account and importing existing mail

If you’re using Outlook client, we recommend creating a new Outlook Profile and adding your new exchange account.

Once the new Microsoft 365 account has been added to your Outlook client, you can import the mail and calendar from the old account/backup you created.

If you’re using Outlook client, you should create a new Outlook Profile and add your new exchange account.

Your migration is now complete.

It might take a few hours for the mailbox to fully synchronise to the exchange server, depending on how many existing emails you imported. Outlook will download any new emails to prevent duplicates.

Your Webmail service is still useable whilst Outlook syncs data. Just go to office.com and click on the Outlook tile.

Will my mailbox capacity be affected?

No, BT email has always had a 1GB capacity and this is not changing. However, many clients allowed additional capacity by using device storage. This will no longer be possible

You can upgrade to a paid-for email service with M365. Remember the service you currently have is a free email service, with limitations.