Forced Domain Takeover in Microsoft 365 as an External Administrator

Lately, I have experienced issues with adding a new custom domain on office 365 tenant. I got the following error while adding the domain:

“Other people in your organization have already signed up with domain.com email addresses. You need to sign up too and then verify that you’re the admin for the domain. We’ll send you an invitation and walk you through the process of becoming the admin.”

This issue arises when someone in your organization has already registered for other Microsoft services, such as Power BI, using the same domain. To resolve this, you have two options:

1. Internal Admin Takeover: Follow Microsoft’s guidance to perform an internal admin takeover process.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/misc/become-the-admin?view=o365-worldwide

2. External Admin Takeover: Alternatively, you can initiate a forced domain takeover in Microsoft 365 as an external admin. This is a quick and straightforward process. I will show you this method.

Both methods will restore full administrative control over your domain within Microsoft 365.

Pre-requisites

• Make sure you have access to domain hosting to add records.
• You need global admin to log on to office 365 tenant.
• You need a machine with PowerShell and MSOnline modules installed.

Process to take over the domain

1. Install-Module MSOnline
2. $Msolcred = Get-credential
3. Connect-MsolService -Credential $MsolCred
4. New-MsolDomain –name domain.com
5. Get-MsolDomainVerificationDns –DomainName domain.com –Mode DnsTxtRecord
6. Add the records to dns hosting.
7. Confirm-MsolDomain –DomainName domain.com –ForceTakeover Force
8. Get-MsolDomain       (To confirm)

Using PowerShell makes the process of performing a forced domain takeover significantly easier. This approach allows you to add a domain to your Office 365 tenant, even if it has already been registered with another Office 365 tenant.