1.1 Current Exam Facts

1.1 Current Exam Facts

Quick Answer: Exam MS-900: Microsoft 365 Fundamentals and the Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals credential retired on March 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time. Candidates can no longer schedule the exam. When it was live it was a no-prerequisite fundamentals exam with a 700 scaled passing score, 45 minutes of exam time, and 65 minutes of seat time. This guide teaches the last official skills outline dated April 30, 2025.

The Microsoft 365 Fundamentals exam, exam code MS-900, was Microsoft's beginner credential for people who needed to explain cloud-based productivity and collaboration. It sat in the same fundamentals family as Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals (SC-900), and Power Platform Fundamentals (PL-900). Passing MS-900 earned Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals. Microsoft's study guide and retired-exam list now treat both the exam and the certification as retired. The exam can no longer be taken.

This chapter exists for two honest reasons. First, people still study Microsoft 365 fundamentals for interviews, classroom units, and later role-based exams. Second, people who already hold the retired credential need a clean record of what the last official outline actually measured. This study guide teaches the last official "Skills measured as of April 30, 2025" outline. It is not a registration portal, and it does not claim you can still book MS-900.

Why these facts still matter

Retirement does not erase the product map. Microsoft 365 still bundles Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Intune, Copilot, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Purview. The April 30, 2025 outline is the last public skills contract Microsoft published for MS-900. If you can describe those services at a fundamentals level — what each one is for, when you would recommend it, and how licensing and support wrap around it — you have the same conceptual floor the exam used to test.

Treat every logistics number in this section as a historical exam fact, not a live checkout page. Microsoft no longer publishes an MS-900 registration price or a schedule button. Where a number is still official on a live Microsoft Learn policy page — the 700 passing score, fundamentals 45 / 65 timing, the typical 40–60 item range — this guide cites that live policy instead of inventing an MS-900-only number.

Who MS-900 was for

Microsoft wrote the audience profile for people who wanted foundational-level knowledge of cloud-based solutions that facilitate productivity and collaboration among on-site, remote, and hybrid workers. Candidates might already know some cloud ideas, or they might be new to Microsoft 365. The exam expected you to recommend Microsoft 365 solutions for common organizational IT challenges — improve productivity, facilitate collaboration, optimize communications, help secure data, and identify compliance — and to be familiar with licensing, deployment and migration assistance, and support options.

That audience sentence is doing a lot of work:

• Foundational means you describe capabilities and choose the right service. You do not configure Conditional Access, write an Intune policy, or size an Azure Virtual Desktop host pool.
• On-site, remote, and hybrid workers is why Teams, OneDrive, Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, and hybrid identity keep showing up.
• Recommend is the exam verb. A typical item gives a business scenario and asks which Microsoft 365 capability fits. It is not a click-path lab.
• Not a prerequisite. Microsoft said you can use MS-900 to prepare for other certifications, but it is not a prerequisite for related ones, including Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert (MS-102) while that exam remains available.

There were no prerequisites. Anyone could sit MS-900 while Pearson VUE still offered it, onsite or online proctored. You did not need a job title, a Microsoft 365 tenant, or another certification.

Format, scoring, and time

Microsoft does not publish a fixed MS-900 item count. The official duration page says most Microsoft certification exams typically contain between 40 and 60 questions, and the number can vary. Do not treat a local practice bank — including a 200-question practice set — as the real exam size. Some items on Microsoft exams are unscored research questions; you will not be told which ones, so you answer every item.

Passing score is 700 on Microsoft's 1-to-1,000 scaled score. A scaled 700 is not "70 percent of the items." Microsoft scores technical exams so that question difficulty and the competence standard, not a raw cutoff, decide the pass line. There is no published raw-item cutoff for MS-900, and this guide will not invent one. Score reports show an overall numeric score, pass/fail, and a bar chart by skill area. Those bars are not a formula you can add up to reconstruct the 700.

Fundamentals exam duration is 45 minutes. Seat duration is 65 minutes. Seat time covers instructions, the Microsoft Certification Exam Candidate Agreement, the questions, and optional comments. Unscheduled breaks are allowed, but the clock keeps running, and you cannot return to items you already saw. Microsoft Learn is not available during fundamentals exams. That split-screen Learn lookup exists on associate and expert role-based exams only. On MS-900 you had to know the concepts cold.

When the exam was live, Pearson VUE delivered it at a test center or through online proctoring. The first retake wait under Microsoft's role-based, specialty, and fundamentals retake policy is 24 hours. Subsequent attempts use a longer wait. After retirement you cannot schedule a first attempt or a retake.

Languages and accommodations

The certification page previously listed twelve languages: English, Japanese, Spanish, German, Chinese (Simplified), French, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Russian, Chinese (Traditional), and Italian. Microsoft updates English first and localized versions later. If an exam is not offered in your preferred language, Microsoft's study-guide language note lets you request an additional 30 minutes. Separate accessibility accommodations — extra time, assistive devices, or a modified exam experience — go through Microsoft's accommodations process, not through that language add-on.

Cost analog, not a live checkout price

Microsoft has removed MS-900 from the schedule path, so there is no current official MS-900 registration price. Live fundamentals that still have a checkout button — AZ-900, SC-900, PL-900, and AB-900 — list $99 USD, with the usual note that price depends on the country or region where the exam is proctored. Teach $99 as the last standard Microsoft fundamentals fee, not as a price you can pay today to sit MS-900. Associate and expert exams sit in a different price band and are not the right analog.

What happens after retirement

If you already earned Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals before March 31, 2026, Microsoft's credential-retirement policy is that the certification remains on your Microsoft Learn transcript. Retired credentials leave the catalog of offerings you can newly earn. Fundamentals certifications do not use the annual renewal cycle that associate and expert credentials use, so holders are not being asked to renew a retired fundamentals badge. You cannot schedule MS-900 to earn it for the first time, and you cannot retake it.

For Microsoft Partners, Microsoft's retirement page notes that eligible certifications earned before retirement can continue to count toward Partner requirements for one year after the retirement date. That is a partner-program rule, not a reason for an individual learner to expect a new MS-900 seat.

Related exams — optional next steps, not a required path

MS-900 was never a required on-ramp. After you finish this guide, pick the exam that matches the job you actually want:

• MS-102 (Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert) while it remains available is the administrator-expert path. Microsoft currently lists an October 31, 2026 retirement for that exam. MS-900 is not a prerequisite. MS-102 is a role-based exam with a different duration, a different skills outline, and Microsoft Learn available during the sitting.
• AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals) if your next gap is Azure architecture, compute, networking, storage, and governance rather than Microsoft 365 apps.
• SC-900 (Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals) if you want a broader security, compliance, and identity vocabulary across Microsoft cloud services.
• AB-900 (Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals) is a current fundamentals exam about supporting, securing, and protecting an AI-enabled Microsoft 365 environment. Microsoft's MS-900 retirement announcement did not officially name AB-900 as a one-to-one replacement. Overlap is limited and conceptual: both mention Microsoft 365 services, Entra, Purview, Defender, and Copilot. AB-900 then goes into Copilot licensing models, agent administration, oversharing, and data security posture for AI — topics MS-900 never treated as a full admin exam.

Do not tell a hiring manager that AB-900 "replaced" MS-900. Say you studied the last official Microsoft 365 Fundamentals outline, and name the live exam you will sit next.

The four domains you will see in this guide

The April 30, 2025 outline splits the exam into four weighted domains. Describe Microsoft 365 apps and services (45–50%) is the largest. Describe security, compliance, privacy, and trust in Microsoft 365 (25–30%) is second. Describe Microsoft 365 pricing, licensing, and support (10–15%) and Describe cloud concepts (5–10%) are smaller but still scored. A candidate who only memorized software as a service versus infrastructure as a service and ignored Teams, Intune, Copilot, Entra ID, and Purview was studying the smallest slice of the exam.

Realistic exam-style scenarios

Interview, not voucher. A help-desk analyst applies for a Microsoft 365 specialist role after March 31, 2026. The posting still says "MS-900 preferred." The candidate cannot book the exam. The useful move is to study this outline, speak fluently about apps versus security versus licensing, and point to a live exam such as AZ-900, SC-900, or AB-900 if the employer wants a current badge.

Transcript check. A consultant earned Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals in 2025. A client asks whether the badge expired when Microsoft retired the exam. The credential remains on the Microsoft Learn transcript under Microsoft's retirement rules. Retirement stops new earners; it does not delete a credential that was already awarded.

Time-box trap. A candidate who sat MS-900 assumed they would have Microsoft Learn in a split screen, the way a colleague described an associate exam. Fundamentals do not include Learn. Forty-five minutes of exam time with no documentation is a different sport from a longer role-based exam with a lookup pane.

Practice-bank mix-up. A study group sees "200 questions" on a practice site and concludes the real exam has 200 items. Microsoft never published a fixed MS-900 count. Most Microsoft certification exams typically contain 40–60 questions. Practice volume is a study tool, not the live blueprint.

Official sources

• Study guide for Exam MS-900 — retirement warning and April 30, 2025 skills outline
• Retired certification exams — MS-900 listed as retired March 31, 2026; the exam can no longer be taken
• Credential retirement — Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals retired the same date; earned credentials remain on the transcript
• Exam duration and exam experience — 45/65-minute fundamentals timing; Learn not available on fundamentals
• Exam scoring and score reports — passing score of 700 or greater on the technical scaled score