"Domain has associated subdomains" or "You cannot remove a domain that has subdomains" error when you try to remove a domain from Office 365

PROBLEM

If you try to remove a domain from Microsoft Office 365, you experience one or both of the following symptoms:
  • When you try to remove the domain through the Office 365 portal, you receive the following error message:
    Domain has associated subdomains.
  • When you try to remove the domain by using Windows PowerShell, you receive the following error message:
    Remove-MsolDomain : You cannot remove a domain that has subdomains. You must first delete the subdomains before you can remove this domain.
    At line:1 char:18
    + Remove-MsolDomain <<<< -DomainName <DomainName>
    + CategoryInfo : OperationStopped: (:) [Remove-MsolDomain], MicrosoftOnlineException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Online.Administration.Automation.DomainHasChildDomainException,Microsoft.Online.Administration.Automation.RemoveDomain
This issue occurs if the domain has associated subdomains.

SOLUTION

To fix this issue, remove all subdomains that contain the domain that you're trying to delete.

For example, consider the following scenario:
  • You have two domains: www.contoso.com and contoso.com.
  • You want to remove the contoso.com domain.
In this scenario, you must also remove the http://www.contoso.com subdomain to remove the contoso.com domain.

MORE INFORMATION

For more info, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
2284755 You get an error message when you try to remove a domain from Office 365
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