You may need to change someone's Office 365 email address and display name if, for example, they get married and their last name changes.
Note: If you're not using the new Microsoft 365 admin center, you can turn it on by selecting the Try the new admin center toggle located at the top of the Home page.
Change a user's email address
You must be an Office 365 global admin to do these steps. Go to admin.microsoft.com:
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In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.
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Select the user's name, and then on the Account tab select Manage username.
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In the first box, type the first part of the new email address. If you added your own domain to Office 365, you can choose the domain for the new email alias by using the drop-down list.
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Select Save changes.
Set the primary email address
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In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.
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Select the user's name, and then on the Account tab select Manage email aliases.
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Select Set as Primary for the email address that you want to set as the primary email address for that person.
IMPORTANT: You will only see this option if you're an Office 365 global admin. If you don't see the option, you don't have permissions to change a user's name and primary email address.
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You'll see a big yellow warning that you're about to change the person's sign-in information. Select Save, then Close.
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Tell the person the following information:
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This change may take a while to take effect.
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What their new username is. They'll need it to sign in to Office 365.
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If they are using Skype for Business Online, tell them they will need to reschedule any Skype for Business Online meetings that they organized, and that they will need to tell their external contacts to update the old contact information.
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If they are using OneDrive, tell them that the URL to this location has been changed. If they have OneNote notebooks in their OneDrive, then they may need to close and reopen them in OneNote. If they have shared files from their OneDrive, then the links to the files may not work and the user can reshare.
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If their password changed too, tell them that they will be prompted to enter the new password on their mobile device, or it won't sync.
Change a user's display name
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In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.
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Select the user's name, and then on the Account tab select Manage contact information.
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In the Display name box, type a new name for the person, and then select Save.
If you get the error message "We're sorry, the user couldn't be edited. Review the user information and try again, see Resolve error messages.
It might take up to 24 hours for this change to take effect across all services. After the change has taken effect, the person will have to sign in to Outlook, Skype for Business and SharePoint with their updated username, so be sure to tell them about this change.
What to do with old email addresses
A person's previous primary email address is retained as an additional email address. We strongly recommend that you don't remove the old email address.
Some people will likely continue to send email to the person's old email address and deleting it may result in NDR failures. Office 365 will automatically route it to the new one. Also, do not reuse old SMTP email addresses and apply them to new accounts. This can also cause NDR failures or delivery to an unintended mailbox.