Fix for “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” error when updating organization name in Microsoft 365

I went to sign up for a new Microsoft 365 tenant today and ran into an issue when trying to purchase as part of the registration process – every payment method I tried came back as invalid. I quite honestly gave up and decided to come back to it later, but when I came back to it later it said that the tenant name I chose was already taken (presumably by me trying to register). OK?? So I logged in with the account I was trying to register for, and it worked. I then purchased licenses with the exact same credit card, and that worked too. 🤷‍♀️

Realizing that the organization name I went with wasn’t entirely intentional or relevant, I went to try to change it in the admin portal settings.

That’s this one here:

screenshot of org settings with organizational information highlighted

And got this error – “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”

object reference not set to an instance of an object error screenshot

I ended up submitting a support ticket, where Frederick gave me some options that were all good leads but ultimately didn’t work, involving private browsing sessions, try another account, renaming under billing in Azure.

Ultimately what fixed it for me was a setting pane called “tenant properties” in the Azure portal:

tenant properties screenshot

This had a place to rename the tenant, which, after waiting about 5 minutes was reflected in the admin portal.

Sharing this solution, as nothing relevant came up when I did an internet search to troubleshoot!

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