"Domain has associated subdomains" when removing a domain from Microsoft 365

Problem

If you try to remove a domain from Microsoft 365, you experience one or both of the following symptoms:

  • When you try to remove the domain through the Microsoft 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.

Note

Azure AD Powershell is planned for deprecation on March 30, 2024. To learn more, read the deprecation update.

We recommend migrating to Microsoft Graph PowerShell to interact with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). Microsoft Graph PowerShell allows access to all Microsoft Graph APIs and is available on PowerShell 7. For answers to common migration queries, see the Migration FAQ.

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 information, see You get an error message when you try to remove a domain from Microsoft 365.

Still need help? Go to Microsoft Community.