Kartik Shah’s brag on SharePoint technologies, Microsoft Consulting, communities, business, p2p networking, IT in business

While the office live small business service is great and it gives great opportunities for small businesses to go online without technical knowledge and know how, it does lack some of the advance database feature and customization. With the same reason I decided to move our domain away from Office Live. However it took me sometime to figure out the procedure. With this post I am trying to explain here the steps carried out by me while transferring the domain to my preferred registrar.

There are following few basic steps involve in doing so.

(Note: This implies for those who have registered the domain name with the office live while singing up or later. If it is registered with another registrar before using at office live, the control will go back to original domain registrar user account you had.)

Sign in to your office live account

Now click on more menu at the top left hand side of the screen and click on add/manage services

On this page choose a Category, click Web Site and E-Mail, and then next to Domains, click Remove.

Under Select which domains to remove (in case of multiple domains in single office live account and you would want to have control or transfer of any one), select Remove? next to the domain names that you want to remove, and then click Confirm.

This will cancel your domain.

Now the important part two : getting control at the Melbourne IT

Manage your domain using Melbourne IT

If you purchased your custom domain name through Office Live Small Business, your domain registrar is Melbourne IT. When you remove the domain name association with Office Live Small Business, you receive an e-mail from the Office Live Small Business team that includes the registry key for your domain. You must use this key to enable Melbourne IT to manage the information and billing for that domain going forward.

• Open your browser, and go to the Go Direct page on the Melbourne IT Web site.
• In the Domain Name box, type the name of your domain.
• In the Domain Registry Key box, type the registry key that you received from the Office Live Small Business team.
• Click Continue. You might need to scroll to the right in your browser to see this button. The My Account Login / Create page appears. You must create an account with Melbourne IT to manage your domain.
• Fill in the requested information as described on the page.
  • The e-mail address that you enter must not be related to the domain that you are trying to transfer or manage.
• When you have finished entering the required information, click Create.
• The Go Direct page appears where you confirm the information that you provided or edit it if necessary. When you're satisfied with the information, click Continue.
• Some time ( I have to do this step), after creation under manage domain you will see no domain to manage, to ensure you finish process of transfer correctly, I opened the godirect page link provided in the Microsoft email, entered the domain key and domain name and pressed continue, on this page I have seen my previously entered data while sign up pre populated and a button to continue, which I pressed, that's it, I received a message saying it is now transferred and should be managed using their control panel. Now I can see the domain under manage domain option.

Your domain is now managed by Melbourne IT. You can find answers to questions or issues on the Melbourne IT Help page.

Step 3 moving domain from Melbourne IT to your preferred domain registrar.

This is now simple registrar to registrar standard method in which you have to ensure that you have transfer code from Melbourne IT system as well as ensure that the domain is unlocked.

I hope this information is useful for others.