Walkthrough 1: Sign Up and Get Started With Your Office 365 Account

Sign Up and Access Your Account

Sign up for your Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses (Plan P1) subscription by visiting Office365.com. If you have more than 25 employees and/or have advanced IT needs, Office 365 also has a variety of enterprise subscriptions to suit the needs of organizations of all sizes.

Office 365 gives you the option to sign up for a 30 day trial period or directly for a paid subscription. The trial is a free period so you can experience Office 365 without having to purchase a subscription. The trial provides the full functionality of Plan P, with the exception that it is limited to 10 users and customers cannot point their custom domain to a trial account. 

To begin, enter your country or region, language, name, organization name, e-mail address, and the name you want for your new subdomain on the Office 365 service:

Click on Check Availability to confirm that your preferred subdomain name is available. Office 365 also enables customers to add a professional domain (such as cohovineyard.com) that they own. The professional domain can be used with e-mail and Web addresses. You may consider this a temporary address.

Next, enter a name for your Microsoft Online Services ID and select a strong password:

You will be prompted to enter verification text from a picture depicting numbers and/or letters. Next, decide if you want to receive offers from Microsoft and Microsoft partners and then click on I accept at the bottom of the page to create your account.

After you successfully sign up, you will land in your new Office 365 account.  You will also receive a welcome e-mail that will tell you how to access your Office 365 account.