Setting up Office 365 I entered the SPF TXT record as specified by the instructions.

• Record type: TXT
• TXT name: @
• TXT value: v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all
• TTL: 3600

When I ran the verify functionality on the Office 365 admin console it indicated that the SPF TXT records could not be found.

I first thought it had to do with the ampersand (@) that the instructions state needs to be in the name field. However, the web based DNS console of my domain provider did not accept ampersand as a valid value for the name field. Correctly so as it would not be a valid subdomain.

After some playing around I discovered there was a space after the “v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all” which I had copy pasted by mistake. After removing the extra space Office 365 validated the SPF TXT record without any problem.