Convert Tenant to Education

[ashmelburnian]

Hi all,

Can someone please advise if it is possible to move/convert an existing Office 365 tenant from “Business and Enterprise”, as shown below, to “Faculty and Students”?

Thanks

Ash

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Ash,

To confirm, it is not possible to convert business tenants to education tenants. Education tenants have a special sign up process whereby you have to provide eligibility

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/education/intune-edu-trial/set-up-office365-edu-tenan...

You would need to create a new tenant through the EDU signup process. No uservoices here (https://office365.uservoice.com/) so you could raise one if you wanted to see it, however I don't think it is in Microsoft's plans in the near future

Hope that answers your question!

Best, Chris

[#3]

Thanks Chris. Do you know if it is possible to easily move an entire organisation's data (Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, domains etc) from one tenant to another?

[#4]

Hmm, you would need to use third party tools to do that job - in the business it's called a tenant to tenant migration (cease and reprovide is another informal name). Put in tenant to tenant migration and reach out to the third parties. Due to house policy here, we can't explicitly name them.

Best, Chris

[#5]

I put this to Microsoft support (Office 365 Online Support Team). Their backend team first check if the customer can be verified as "Education". If so, they'll proceed with removing existing tags on the tenant ("nonprofit" tag in this case) and add the education tag.

Once the tenant has the education tag is in place I understand that Office 365 Academic licensing can be purchased & assigned to existing users in the tenant.

[#6]

That's good to know they have recently and finally improved the process. If they have feedback then they may want to put this on docs.com as it would help a lot of people to know this.

Then the final solution is the tag change and move over to EDU subscriptions. However, I would also be aware that applications are different - such as Teams. I would double check that the differences in the applications are accounted for when doing the switch. I mean here if you already have Teams in play, do the change - does it add things like school data sync and assignments, class notebook etc. Otherwise you'll do the change and end up with issues.

Hope that helps again

Best, Chris

[#7]

@ashmelburnian, yes, thanks for that info. Was this process in the works or did MS Support actually complete this and tenant was changed from nonprofit to education?

I have not found anyone at MS that could help with this particular scenario. However, having seen this, i will continue the hunt.

thanks,

[#8]

@SctClsn  MS Support converted the tenant at our request. Let me know if you would like me to DM you the MS contact.

MS Support verified the tenant as eligible for converting to EDU, then removed the Nonprofit tag and added the EDU tag.

Here is the authorization email:

Microsoft Online Services Support has received a request to remove the nonprofit the nonprofit tag associated with < tenant.onmicrosoft.com>. We have created a Service Request (SR), <1234567>, to track the progress of your request. Please be advised that nonprofit tag remove is an irreversible action. If you want us to continue with this request, please reply to this email and provide the following information.

Do you authorize Microsoft to manually remove the nonprofit tag under the tenant tenant.onmicrosoft.com?

Please indicate your authorization to continue by typing your name and your user ID (also known as OrgID) in the space below

Name:_______________________________

OrgID:_______________________________
(For example: user@domain.onmicrosoft.com)

[#9]

@ashmelburnian  - Thanks much. I think I tracked down the correct #/dpt and MS is working on the certification. Fingers crossed.

here was the buried page with an actual phone number that works for 365 Edu:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/academic/compare-office-365-education-plans?activetab=...

thanks All.