Setup Office 365

If you wish to use Office 365 for your domain's email service (instead of hosting mail on your hosting account) you will need to set up several DNS records in Plesk for this to work.

The process is as follows:

Add TXT record for verification
Add MX record to redirect your email
Add four CNAME records
Add a TXT record for SPF to help prevent email spam
Add two SRV records

Please note that DNS changes may take a few hours to fully propagate and take effect across the Internet.

We will now describe each step in detail below.

1. Add TXT record for verification

Log in to your Plesk Panel
Click "Websites & Domains"
Click the domain name
Click DNS Settings
Click Add Record
Select 'TXT' in the dropdown list for Record type
Leave Domain name blank
Set TXT record to MS=msXXXXXXXX
(please note: This is just an example. Use your specific Destination or Points to Address value here from Office 365.) How to find this?
Click OK button to save the changes.

Now that you have added the TXT record on your Plesk Panel, you shall need to login back to your Office 365 account and request Office 365 to look for the record.

After Office 365 finds that the TXT record is correct, your domain name will be verified.

On your Office 365 account, go to your Domains page.
On your Manage domains page, select the domain that you are verifying and then, in the Action column for that domain, choose Start setup.
On the Add this TXT record to show you own domain_name page, choose Okay, I've added the record.
Choose Next.

Please note that it may take a few hours for the DNS changes to take effect across the Internet.

2. Add MX record to redirect your email

You will need to add an MX record for your emails to redirect to Office 365 servers. Please refer to the steps below on how to setup an MX record on your Plesk Panel.

Log in to your Plesk Panel
Click "Websites & Domains"
Click the domain name
Click DNS Settings
On the listed DNS records, please remove first our default MX record before adding Office 365 MX record (the default record will point to mail.yourdomain.com)
Once the default MX record has been removed, click Add Record
Select 'MX' for Record type
Leave Mail domain blank
Set Mail exchange server to <MX token>.mail.protection.outlook.com, where <MX token> is a value like MSxxxxxxx
(please note: This is just an example. Use your specific Destination or Points to Address value here from Office 365.) How to find this?
Set Priority to 'very high 0'
Click OK button to save the changes

3. Add four CNAME records

There are four CNAME records that Office 365 required to setup. Please follow the steps below on how to add the four CNAME records on your Plesk Panel.

Log in to your Plesk Panel
Click "Websites & Domains"
Click the domain name
Click DNS Settings
Click Add Record
Select 'CNAME' for Record type

On the two fields being asked, please copy and paste the following values. Create the four CNAME records one at a time.
Click OK button to save the changes.
Repeat steps 5-7 for all four of the CNAME records as shown in the table above.

4. Add a TXT record for SPF to help prevent email spam

SPF records are used to prevent spammers from sending messages with forged From addresses at your domain. To set up an SPF record in your Plesk Panel, please follow the steps below.

Log in to your Plesk Panel
Click "Websites & Domains"
Click the domain name
Click DNS Settings
Click Add Record
Select 'TXT' for Record type (setting up SPF record is done through adding TXT record)
Leave Domain name blank
Set TXT record to: v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all
Click OK button to save the changes.
If you wish to validate the SPF record, you may use one of these SPF validation tools.