DirSync to Office365

Question

I have a Windows 2012R2 server with a single domain, xxxx.local. All the users were created with a UPN of first initial and last name. Also, separately created all the users in Office365, with domain, xxxx.net and an email address of the [email protected] Each
of these accounts was licensed and works appropriately. These accounts also have all the users exchange data set up and working correctly. Then, implemented DirSync. When DirSync did its initialization, it created a second account in Office365. So, in Office365
admin -- Users and Groups, each user appears twice:
Name               [email protected]             in cloud
Name                [email protected]           Sync'd with Active Directory
The second account is unlicensed, and un-needed, other than that is the account it sync'd to active directory. I really need the DirSync to sync to the first account, which has the appropriate email address and the users data. How can this be fixed?

Answer 1

Is there a specific reason you created the accounts in Office 365, and then configured DirSync afterweards? (Or was this something done weeks apart because you needed things running before you could install DirSync?)
DirSync doesn't sync to 365 accounts; it sync AD accounts to 365 (or Azure AD more specifically).
So, the correct order of things would be.
- Set up contoso.net as a domain in Office 365.
- Add contoso.net as a secondary upn for the users in AD. (This does not change you using contoso.local as the domain name and primary upn.)
- Install DirSync.
The AD users with contoso.net will automatically get contoso.net in 365 as well, and it's just a matter of assigning licenses.
Users with contoso.local will get the contoso.onmicrosoft.com in the cloud, but it will still show as synced and you can change the upn. (Highly recommend changing in AD, not 365.)
What you want to do is merge the two accounts sort of, but I'm not sure if that is doable.