Here’s what you need to do before and after your school upgrades from Microsoft Live@edu to Microsoft Office 365 for education.

Because of differences in how each school uses Live@edu and plans to use Office 365, some of these steps may not apply to you. If you have received instructions from your school, follow those instructions rather than the steps in this topic.

In this article

Get ready for the upgrade

What to expect during the upgrade

After the upgrade is complete

Get ready for the upgrade

Here’s what to do when you hear that Microsoft Office 365 for education is coming soon to your school:

  1. Make sure your desktop software is up-to-date with the Office 365 software requirements. Office 365 doesn’t support the following software and will need to be replaced:
       
    • Internet Explorer 6 or 7. If you are using Internet Explorer 6 or Internet Explorer 7, you or your administrator needs to install a newer version of Internet Explorer.
    • Outlook 2003. If you use Outlook to read your email and are using Microsoft Office 2003, we recommend that you update Outlook to Office Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010.              
  2. Bookmark the following so you can easily find them:
  3. To make it easy to reset your Microsoft account password if you need to during or after the upgrade, if you have another email address, add it to your Live@edu account as an alternate email address. For information about how to add an alternate email address, see Why do I need to add security info?
         

What to expect during the upgrade

Here’s what to expect:

  • You can continue to use email, SkyDrive, and Messenger throughout the upgrade.
  • You may notice that your school’s logo in Outlook Web App has been replaced with the Office 365 logo.
  • When you navigate to the sign-in URL for Outlook Web App, you may get redirected to an Outlook Live sign in page or an Office 365 sign in page.
  • Your Live@edu account becomes two separate accounts:
    • A new Office 365 account that you’ll use for school-related email and collaboration. Your email address and password will stay the same as it is now with Microsoft Live@edu.    
    • A personal Microsoft account that you can use to access your SkyDrive files, Messenger, and other Microsoft services. This account uses your Live@edu user name and password.
  • If you forget your password during the upgrade:
    • To recover access to your personal Microsoft account:
    • To recover access to your Office 365 account, ask your admin to reset your Office 365 password after the upgrade is complete.   

After the upgrade is complete

Here’s what to do as soon as you’re told that the upgrade is complete:

       
  1. Sign in to Office 365 at https://portal.microsoftonline.com/, and click Run the Setup Quickstart. Follow the directions (click the tabs) to set up your computer.
  2. In Office 365, to access your email, click Outlook at the top of the page.
    Or, you can go directly to your email at any of the following URLs:
    • http://mail.office365.com/ 
    • https://www.outlook.com/[school domain]; for example, https://www.outlook.com/contoso.edu.
    • The URL that your school gave you, in a similar format to http://mail.contoso.edu/. 
  3. Sign in to your personal Microsoft account at https://skydrive.live.com/, using the same user name and password you used with Live@edu.
    • This is now a personal account for you, which means that your educational institution's administrator can no longer reset the password.
    • You can change the password on this account whenever you want to.
    • This account gives you access to all your SkyDrive content and other Microsoft services such as Messenger.
    •  If you need help with this account, see Microsoft account help.            
  4. Check with your administrator to see if your classroom workflow now uses SharePoint Online or Lync Online.