How To - Microsoft 365 - Creating New Users For Your Organization

2025-07-17

Security Compliance Best Business Practices

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Overview

This will show you how to add a user into your Microsoft tenant account. There are many ways of doing this, like Entra Admin Portal, Azure Admin Portal, and Office Admin Portal. We will be doing it through the Office Admin Portal.

Prerequisites

  • Microsoft Administrator Role to add users.

Warnings

⚠️ Adding a user will require a license unless they are replacing someone.
⚠️ Do not give the password to the end user via unencrypted email.

Steps

  1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
  2. Go to Users > Active users, and select Add a user.
  3. In the Set up the basics pane, fill in the basic user information, and then select Next.
    • Name: Fill in the first and last name, display name, and username.
    • Domains: Choose the domain for the user’s account. For example, if the user’s username is Jakob, and the domain is contoso.com, they’ll sign in by using jakob@contoso.com.
    • Password settings: Choose to use the autogenerated password or to create your own strong password for the user.
    • The user must change their password after 90 days. Or you can choose to require this user to change their password when they first sign in.
  4. In the Assign product licenses pane, select the location and the appropriate license for the user. If you don’t have any licenses available, you can still add a user and buy additional licenses. Expand Apps and select or deselect apps to limit the apps the user has a license for. Select Next.
  5. In the Optional settings pane, expand Roles if you want to make this user an admin. Expand Profile info to add additional information about the user. Select Next.
  6. In the Review and finish page, review your new user’s settings, make any changes you like, then select Finish adding.
  7. On the …added to active users page:
    • To get the user their password, select Print to create a hard copy or a PDF of their credentials that you can securely share with them.
    • Send them an email that contains useful information to help them get started with Microsoft 365.
    • Select whether you want to save these user settings as a template and choose whether you want to add another user.
    • Select Close.

Notes & Troubleshooting

  • Common issues and fixes
  • Known bugs
  • When to escalate

Add users and assign licenses in Microsoft 365 - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn