So which one am I?

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If you use Microsoft 365 you’ve probably seen this screen.  And if you are like most of us you stop at that screen and ask yourself… okay which one
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Morty, abbodi86

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At one point if you sold Microsoft volume licenses, your reseller account used the private identity, even while things like 365 delegated admin went by the “work” identity.

So you practically *had* to have both a “private” account with your work email address or things broke in interesting ways.

I’d be happy to learn that this is no longer so… if I’ll again happen to end up at a job where I’m selling Microsoft volume licenses while also using 365 for primary work email.

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A few years ago Microsoft stopped allowing business Office 365 email addresses to be used for new personal accounts, but by that time many people in small & medium size businesses had used the same address for both, leading to a kind of hellish confusion that Microsoft has done nothing to clear up for many years now.

Around the time of the LinkedIn acquisition there were hints that MS might work on linking accounts for a kind of single sign-on experience. It’s easy to imagine that a single login would authenticate you into both work and personal services. Your personal account would be the “permanent” one; a business could disconnect your work account in Azure AD when you left a job.

But that never happened. Microsoft never clearly explains the two accounts; instead it constantly makes the confusion worse by giving services identical names and visuals. I deal with confused people every day.

FWIW, I wrote an attempt to clarify things for confused end users recently. Understanding Microsoft Business And Personal Accounts Best I could do to make sense of it.

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Morty, NetDef

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Valisystem’s linked blog post is an excellent guide, explainer and step by step instruction set on pretty much everything related to identifying which MS accounts you might have contain licenses, what to do about them, and how to safely change the email address for the personal account.

Highly recommended!  Like so many things, DO read the entire set of instructions before you attempt to make the change.  You do not want to make a mistake here.

1: https://www.bruceb.com/2020/10/understanding-microsoft-business-and-personal-accounts/

2: https://www.bruceb.com/2020/10/how-to-change-the-login-for-your-microsoft-personal-account/

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Kirsty, Valisystem

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I agree it is highly confusing. Last week someone set up a Teams meeting with me. This is the first time I have used Teams,  but I downloaded the app as it encouraged me to do. However, I got the screen you cite and, whether I tried “home” or “work”, I could not log in. All I got is that someone else in my company had set up the Teams account on my email. Funny that. I don’t use Microsoft 365, I have a Microsoft account (as we all are forced to if we use Windows 10), I am retired with my own domain for which I am the IT Administrator (for what that is worth), so there is no one else. So I used the browser option for the meeting.

Frustrating, and it does not endear Teams to me.

 

 

Chris
Win 10 Pro x64 Group A

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Chris B wrote:

I agree it is highly confusing. Last week someone set up a Teams meeting with me. This is the first time I have used Teams, but I downloaded the app as it encouraged me to do. However, I got the screen you cite and, whether I tried “home” or “work”, I could not log in.

Oh, Teams is its own kind of weirdness on top of everything else with Microsoft accounts.

They made a big deal publicly on allowing free personal use of Teams at some point “to help people in quarantine etc” or something… and never seemed to mention that it’s only Teams on mobile platforms where that applies. (At least for me it works that way on phone and tablet but not on the desktop.)

However, you can still use the desktop application to join meetings you’re invited to. You just need to pass the meeting address to it directly on the application command line. (It’ll give an option to do that if I open the meeting in a browser, seems to work usually.)

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Chris B

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@mn- Thanks. I think I will continue using Teams only if someone else starts and hosts it, and if I initiate i will use Zoom and Skype.

Chris
Win 10 Pro x64 Group A

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Don’t forget MVLS and MSDN account. I have both of them at work, since we now have O365 it’s mess. I have to remember to choose personal account in order to be able to log with them.

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It was Office 365 when I bought it from the Store, now it’s Microsoft 365.  When I bought it I was also using my laptop in my contracting job, through which I had a company email account via their Exchange Server.

Outlook was gathering email from four (now three) email addresses.  I’ve never seen that screen.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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The worse thing is that there is a bug in it that lets anyone log in that MS has not fixed. You can have work account but someone with person hotmail account can log in and will get into you work account without having to do MFA or password. MS does not care about clients any more.

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anonymous wrote:

The worse thing is that there is a bug in it that lets anyone log in

Bug in what?
Please supply details so we can verify your claim.

cheers, Paul

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Chris B wrote:

I have a Microsoft account (as we all are forced to if we use Windows 10)

Not true. Neither of my W10 boxes runs with an MS account.

cheers, Paul

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Kirsty

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