Give Users Administrator Permissions

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Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Live@edu

You can use the Exchange Control Panel or Windows PowerShell to create an Exchange Online administrator account by promoting an existing cloud-based user account. You should always have more than one Exchange Online administrator so that you don't lose your ability to administer your cloud-based domain.

Users with cloud-based accounts that you promote to Exchange Online administrator can access the organization-level administrative functionality of the Exchange Control Panel. For more information, see Administrator Accounts in Live@edu.

Before you begin

By default, new accounts that you create in the current version of the cloud-based service are automatically given access to use Windows PowerShell in the cloud-based organization. However, if your organization was upgraded from an earlier version of the cloud-based service, existing users may not have the necessary permissions to use Windows PowerShell in the cloud-based organization. For information, see Control Users' Access to Windows Remote Management.

Create an Exchange Online administrator account using the Exchange Control Panel

  1. Select Manage My Organization > Roles & Auditing > Administrator Roles.
  2. In the Role Groups list, select Organization Management, and then click Details.
  3. On the Organization Management page, in the Members section, click Add.
  4. Select the user that you want to promote to Exchange Online administrator, click Add, and then click OK.
  5. On the Organization Management page, click Save.

Create an Exchange Online administrator account using Windows PowerShell

To learn how to install and configure Windows PowerShell and connect to the service, see Use Windows PowerShell in Exchange Online.

Run the following command after you have connected to the server-side session:

Add-RoleGroupMember "Organization Management" -Member <existing user>

For example, to make the existing user laura@contoso.com an Exchange Online administrator, run the following command:

Add-RoleGroupMember "Organization Management" -Member laura@contoso.com

Note   You can use the Update-RoleGroupMember cmdlet with the Members parameter to specify multiple users. However, the list of users you specify overwrites the current members of the role group. You should use the Get-RoleGroupMember cmdlet to record the current members of the role group.