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Having Office 365 tenants require to bought dedicated subscriptions.

Thankfully you can easily create a unique test or developer Office 365 tenant for free.

Microsoft offers the possibility to create a dedicated Office 365 tenant for development purposes. Microsoft 365 / Office 365 Developer program gives you the possibility to get access to Office 365 for free. You will be able to use it for 90 days or more.

OFFICE 365 FOR FREELANCER
? MICROSOFT 365 PLANS COMPARISON
? Review Microsoft 365 feature comparison matrix and learn which Apps are present in what plans.
Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

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Owning additional or multiple Office 365 tenants can really useful for your organization:

  • You can build a development environment and fully separate it from your Office 365 production
  • You can use it to test the new functionalities in case you are not using Target Release preferences
  • You can play with Office 365 from perspective of global settings
  • You can request additional preview program in separated space
  • You can build great demo/poc/mvp environment

The greatest thing about that is that you can do that absolutely for free. 

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

Parameters of the Microsoft 365 / Office 365 Developer program:

  • You will be allowed to setup up to 25 user accounts
  • Service could be used for the development, testing of Office 365. It cannot be used for production usage.
  • Microsoft offers a 90-days fully-functional Office 365 subscription.
  • ⚡ If you will actively use and build solutions on Office 365 Developer tenant it will be renewed every 3 months.

As part of the new Office 365 tenant, you will get access to most of the applications available in Microsoft offer.

Apps included into Microsoft 365 /  Office 365 Developer subscription:

  • SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook/Exchange, Teams, Planner, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more
  • Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
  • Advanced analytics with Power BI
  • Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) for compliance and information protection
Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

How to get free Microsoft 365 / Office 365 tenant for developing purpose

Signing up for the Office 365 Developer program will require about 15 minutes. You will need to get through a few steps.

1.  Sign-up or log into Microsoft Account

Open signing to Office 365 Developer program.

Log in in new window or sign-up for the Microsoft Account by clicking Create one! button.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

In the next step set the email address and choose Next (1).  The following screen will ask you to set up the password and to choose Next (2).

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free
Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

You will be asked to choose your Country/region (1) and Birthdate (2). Choose Next (3) to move forward.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

At the last step, you will be asked to verify your email address by passing the validation code (1).

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

You can be also asked to fill ReCaptcha picture based validation. After it, you will have validated Microsoft Account and you can log in.

2. Signing up for the program

Open the Developer program site again by visiting the website again and choose Set up subscription (1) button.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

Now you will need to fill the registration form by:

  • choosing Country (1) – it cannot be changed later on
  • setting up admin user name (2)
  • confirming the tenant name in Create domain (3) field – the system will validate if it is available (4)
  • passing the Password (5)

Choose Continue (6) button to move to the next step.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

In the next step you will be asked to verify your mobile phone number. After it the creation of your tenant will start.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

Your tenant subscription will be available in 1-2 minutes.

SETUP OF SERVICES
?  Please note that the setup of all services could take up to 48 hours. All services will be available immediately but from a functional perspective, they will need time for the final setup.
Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

3. Create dummy users

You will need multiple accounts for testing purposes. you can easily generate them in Sample data packs section.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

The automated generation process will generate 16 users. It will require you to log in to new tenant admin account. You can copy the user name by copy button (1).

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

After you will be logged you will be asked to allow the process to make changes to your new environment.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

In the final step, you will be asked to setup a password that will be shared between all accounts. Note that password down.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

As soon as the user will be set up you will receive email confirmation. When you login to the environment you will see dummy accounts deployed.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

4. Fill in calendars and emails of the dummy users

In the next step you can setup the emails and calendars of created user bo choosing Mail & Events sample data.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

You can execute the deploy by choosing Install button.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

In the next 5 minutes your users will receive Outlook-related dummy data.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

As soon as the user will be set up you will receive an email confirmation and environment will contain additional data deployed.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

4. Setup SharePoint sites

You can also deploy the Office 365 SharePoint site. Just choose SharePoint button.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

In the next step you will start setup of SharePoint sample data pack by clicking on Start button.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

You will be asked to choose SharePoint site template (1) and then move to Next (2) step.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

In the following screen you will be asked to setup the addresses for the SharePoint site. You can also left it as it is and move forward.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

At the last step you will need to authorize again and Accept permissions for the deployment app.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free

In this case deployment process could be much longer. After 20-30 minutes your SharePoint sites will be deployed.

Create Microsoft 365 sandbox for free
? ADDITIONAL SHAREPOINT TEMPLATES
?  You can deploy additional great 16 Modern SharePoint site templates.
?  You can also deploy Office 365 Adoption Training site template.

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