After having spent about 2 days in various forums (including this one) I am finally at a point where I either give up or post my problem, as I can't seem to figure out how to manage this.
This is the starting point:
1) I use Outlook 2010 professional with all the latest updates. I am able to set up OL365 to sync with my offline OL2010
2) For about a year now, I have hosted my domain with 1&1, who host my website, as well as email (POP)
3) I sync my offline calendar and contact data to Gmail, and from there onto my Blackberry
4) I have decent knowledge of hardware and software, but I am not a specialist and know almost nothing about exchange
5) My domain is "kwiloo.net"
6) I am looking for a more professional setup in terms of email, with deeper integration of BB-sync, as well as the additional benefit of keeping a copy of my outlook data online as a backup. I travel a lot in Africa and this is a safety measure.
Now, after having investigated for a better overall solution, including more integrated sync between my OL2010 and my BB, I decided to give it a shot and sign up with OL365 with the intention to use my publicly known email address (not the new OL365 address), implement Lync and, at a later point possibly move my website to SharePoint.
However, I am already stuck with the first task.
After reading a few forums I learned that 1&1 is a bit tricky and the instructions on OL365 regarding 1&1 are not really accurate. I figured that as soon as I gave it my first try (using OL365's instructions) when suddenly my website disappeared. Therefore I followed the instructions given on other sites and
a) created a sub-domain "autodiscover.kwiloo.net" and inserted kwiloo-net.mail.eo.outlook.com as the MX address (as stated by OL365 in my own settings). This sub-domain is live and active, and has a valid and working IP-address, maintained by 1&1 name server which I can positively ping.
b) created a sub-domain "ms229xxxxx.kwiloo.net" (the details obtained from OL365) and inserted kwiloo-net.mail.eo.outlook.com as the MX address (as stated by OL365 in my own settings). This sub-domain is live and active, and has a valid and working IP-address, maintained by 1&1 name server which I can positively ping.
c) 1&1 does not support TXT settings
d) tried to change the value in the autodiscover sub-domain to CNAME autodiscover.outlook.com (whereby I cannot change the MX values), but with those settings implemented the sub-domain would never go life, even after a day.
However, even though I did that already a few days ago, OL365 does not seem to be able to connect. The domain status is listed as "verified" but when I troubleshoot my domain it comes back with an error "Some DNS records at your registrar are not correct." Furthermore it lists ALL the DNS settings for Exchange Online and Lync without specifying which one specifically is wrong (I am not even at the point to discuss Lync yet). I even run the MOSDAL tool but, honestly, cannot decipher the results...
This is where I am stuck right now. I know this topic has been discussed in many forums but I also noticed that there are many users battling with similar problems. I would hope that somebody can brake down the steps to me so that I can finally get this system up and running.
Thanks for your support