Assign the Global Administrator role to a user account in Office 365

This article describes how to assign the Global Administrator role to an Office 365® user account.

Prerequisites

• Applies to: Administrator
• Difficulty: Easy
• Time Needed: Approximately 15 minutes
• Tools Needed: Administrators need access to the Office 365 Control Panel

For more information about prerequisite terminology, see Cloud Office support terminology.

Organizations with multiple administrators might need to have more than one Global Administrator in Office 365. A Global Administrator account is required to access the Office 365 Control Panel. Global Administrators have almost unlimited access to your organization's settings and most of the data.

Note: Each Office 365 account is created with a default administrator account with the Global Administrator role. Credentials for the default administrator account are sent to the email address provided during the sign-up for Office 365 services.

Assign the Global Administrator role to a user

Use the following steps to assign the Global Administrator role to a user:

1. Log in to your Office 365 Control Panel.

2. From the left menu, select Users.

3. Find the user you wish to assign the role to and select Manage.

4. Select Edit Username.

5. Under Role, select Global Administrator from the drop-down menu.

6. Select Save.

7. The selected user now has the Global Administrator role assigned to their account.

Warning: Microsoft® warns that having more than four Global Administrators on an account is a security threat.

Securing your Global Administrator account

As an administrator of your company’s email solution, you have a great deal of control over your account. If your administrator access is compromised, the results can be devastating to your business. A strong security policy is not complete without enabling multi-factor authentication. See Manage multi-factor authentication for users in Office 365 for instructions.

Additional information

To view the full description of the Global Administrator role in Office 365, see Administrator role permissions in Azure Active Directory.