How to Migrate from GoDaddy to Office 365: Step-By-Step Guide

Besides using GoDaddy as our DNS provider, we're not really fans of their email service or the way they lock people into long-term contracts when they bundle Office 365. GoDaddy, for whatever reason, will restrict global admin privileges and restrict the apps that can be used, really inconveniencing customers. So here's a step by step guide to migrate from Godaddy to Office 365.

This article is continuously being updated as steps change. Last updated: August 22, 2020

Before you start, watching Brandon's video below from our Why GoDaddy Office 365 is a trap! blog post.

Table of Contents

1. Preparation
2. Migrate GoDaddy to Office 365
3. Post-migration steps for GoDaddy

Preparation

1. What email service are you currently using?
2. Who is your DNS provider, who is the admin to the account, and what are the credentials?
3. How many inboxes are there?
4. What items do you want to migrate? Just the emails? Contacts? Calendar items?
5. Do you have any shared inboxes?
6. How many domains do you have?
7. How many email aliases are there?
8. How large (GBs) are each of the mail boxes?
9. You need a Skykick account
10. Microsoft's policy limits the transfer rate of data to 10GB per user/per day. What does that mean? Take a list of all the mailboxes you have today and rank them by size, from largest to smallest. If the largest mailbox of all of them is 18GB, then it will take 2 days to migrate. If the largest of the bunch is 7GB, then it will take under a day to migrate all of them.

Migrate GoDaddy to Office 365

Before you start, make sure that you:

1. Skykick cut over time has been scheduled with your team
2. You have access to the GoDaddy DNS
3. You have the first Name, last Name, username and password for all your users in an excel spreadsheet except if you are planning to be using Enable SSI (Source-Side Impersonation) on GoDaddy in Step 6
4. You know which of your users is an admin on GoDaddy

Let's start! The entire process should only take about 60 to 75 minutes!

Step 1 - DNS Access 

1. 1. Validate that you can still connect to the DNS on GoDaddy

1. 1. Log in into GoDaddy
   2. Click on Account Settings
   3. Select the domain you will be working on
   4. Click on DNS
   5. Under the Advanced Feature section in the bottom of the page, click on Export Zone File (Windows)
   6. Save the file locally so you can restore the DNS to its original state if something were to happen

1. 1. Wait until the Final mailboxes migration on SkyKick is complete. Skykick must be in Sweep Mode before you can move to step 4

1. 1. Go to Azure AD Portal https://portal.azure.com (in private mode)
   2. Use the GoDaddy credential from one of the users with Admin privileges
   3. Once on the Azure portal, select Azure Active Directory.
   4. Go to Users.
   5. Look for an Admin account that looks like admin@xxxx.onmicrosoft.com.
   6. Select this user account and click on Reset Password at the Top Navigation pane > Reset Password.
   7. You will get a temporary Password, Copy the temp password as well as the admin@xxxx.onmicrosoft.com username into Notepad.
   8. Sign-Out for the Azure Portal and open a new browser session and login to https://portal.azure.com with the New Global Admin Account admin@xxxx.onmicrosoft.com. During the first sign-in, reset the password and set a new password.
   9. Make sure to save it locally on Notepad

1. 1. Make sure the admin account is a global admin.
   2. Click on the Windows Start button.
   3. Search for Windows PowerShell (PowerShell should already be installed).
   4. Start PowerShell under an administrator context (right-click -> run as administrator)
   5. Run the following PowerShell commands (one at a time):

Notes:

• Enable-OrganizationCustomization command can take a very long time to run.
• Ignore any error such as "This operation is not available in current service offer."
• Ignore any error such as "The assignment of the management role 'ApplicationImpersonation' [...] won't take effect until user is migrated."
• Make sure to replace "admin@domain.com" in the last PowerShell command above with the global admin account used for migration.

1. Open Windows PowerShell as Administrator and run the following commands:

 

Step 7 - Delete user accounts/ email addresses on GoDaddy

1. Run the following commands:

Step 8 - Remove Domain from GoDaddy

1. Run the following commands:

Step 9 - Add vanity domain and update DNS on new Office 365 tenant

1. Log to Office 365 with Admin credentials
2. Go to Admin -> Setup -> Domains
3. Click on Add Domain
4. Enter your domain
5. You will be prompted by the Verify Domain page. Select Add a TXT record instead
6. On a separate browser, open your DNS and add the TXT record
7. Once done, wait few minutes and then click on Verify
8. You will now be prompted by the Update DNS settings page. Select I'll add the DNS records myself
9. Update the DNS accordingly and remove any GoDaddy email server references
10. Once done, click the Refresh button until you get the message "All DNS records are correct, no error found"

1. On Office 365 Portal, click on Users -> Active users
2. Select one user, and click Edit within the Username / Email section
3. Create a new alias using the new vanity domain name and click Add
4. Click Set as primary
5. A big Warning yellow box will be displayed. Click Save
6. Click Close
7. Now ready Steps b -f for all the other users 

1. On Office 365 Portal, click on Users -> Active users
2. Select one of the user and reset his password (uncheck Make this user change their password when they first sign in)
3. Now, send a test email to this user
4. In a separate window, open Office 365 portal, use the credential of this user, and confirm that your email was received.
5. Delete the test email from their inbox as well as their deleted email folder

Consider this step completed only when both send and receive tests have been successful

Step 12 - Password Reset

1. Now, reset the passwords for all users (using the password you have communicated to your users in Post Migration Steps) and check this user can change their password when they first sign in
2. All passwords should now have been reset

1. Within Office 365 -> Active Users, please remove the following accounts
   • zzSKCxxxx (all SkyKick accounts)
   • SkyKick Inc.
2. Make sure to delete the accounts from the Deleted Users to Permanent Deletion from Office 365. Open Windows PowerShell as Administrator and run the following commands:

Step 14 - Set SSPR on a new domain

1. Within Office 365, click on Admin -> Admin centers ->Azure Active Directory
2. Click on Azure Active Directory
3. Click on Password Reset
4. Under Self-service password reset enabled, select All
5. Click Save 

Post-migration Steps from GoDaddy to Office 365

Step 1 - Reset your password

To connect to your new email:

1. Go to https://www.office.com
2. Click on Log in
3. Use your credentials
   1. Username: <your email address> (i.e.: johndoe@contosos.com)
   2. Temporary password: NewPassw0rd! (<-just an example)
   3. Follow the wizard to reset and create your own password.
   4. Once done, you will be able to check your email on your smartphone (iOS or Android) using the Outlook app and/or via Office 365 Outlook Web (as shown below)

Step 2 - Log off your Office Application from GoDaddy

1. Open Microsoft Word
2. Click on Files
3. Click on Office Account
4. Click on Sign out
   1. You will now get a message similar to the one below
5. Click Yes
6. Repeat steps D and E until your only option is Sign In (as shown below)
7. Click Sign in
8. Enter your new credentials (Select work or school if asked)
   1. Username: <your email address> (i.e.: johndoe@contoso.com )
   2. Password: use the one you created when resetting your password in step 1
   3. Your Office 365 Office Applications are now fully disconnected from GoDaddy and now connected to your new Office 365 tenant

Step 3 - Update Office 365 to the latest version

1. Open Microsoft Word
2. Click on Files
3. Click on Office Account
4. Click the button Update Options -> Update now
   1. Office will either install an update or you will get a message such as “You’re up to date! The latest version of Office is installed on your computer”

Step 4 - Reset your Outlook Profile

If you were using Outlook 2013 or 2016 to manage your email hosted by GoDaddy, you will need to reset your Outlook profile as your Exchange server has changed from GoDaddy to Microsoft. Watch our video video on Microsoft Outlook Profile Update.

What if you don't know how to do this, don't want to try and mess it up yourself, or don't have the time?

We can do it for you, go to our migration quote builder and we'll give you the price of doing this without even having to talk to us. 😊 You'll get an example bill that looks something like this below.

Want to talk to someone about the specifics? Just start open our web chat on the right side of this web page or schedule a call with us below.