Two accounts, same email, can only access one

[robeggleston]

I'm having a weird issue in Teams.

An organisation I contract for made me a guest account on their Teams channel using my email address.

Then, my employer made an actual 365 account for me and set me up on their Teams channel using the same email address.

I then lost access to the first channel however users could still send me messages which wouldn't make it to my actual 365 account. I also couldn't receive any invitations to re-join the channel as I was technically still a guest. Somehow, I managed to fix this on my desktop and can now see both channels however when I log in to any other device, I can't see the channel that I'm a guest of.

So my theory is, somehow I have both a guest Teams account and an actual Teams account registered under the same email address, same password. I can't login to the guest account except that I was somehow able to make it appear at the same time as my actual 365 account on my desktop.

I need to merge these accounts somehow. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Rob

[#2]

Hello @robeggleston  Your issues sounds similar to another post in this community:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/microsoft-double-account/m-p/1141490

If this doesn't resolve your issue, please let us know.  Thanks for being a member of the Teams community.

[#3]

@ThereseSolimeno Unfortunately this isn't the same issue. Nor can I follow those steps to fix it.

When I login to Microsoft or to Teams, I'm not prompted to select which account. I just know that I have a second guest account because I only have access on one machine, and have somehow previously been able to log back into that one.

When I'm logged into Teams on my work PC and click on my account icon, I can see my name and '(Guest)' in brackets. And I can see both teams. When I log in to Teams on a new device, I don't have '(Guest)' next to my name and I can only see one team.

Furthermore, when I'm logged in on another device, my colleagues send me messages and I don't receive them.

See attached screenshots.

    

[#4]

Anyone have a solution for this?

I basically need to be able to merge by guest Teams account and my Office 365 account which are both under the same email address. I have no way of logging into my guest Teams account as it automatically opens my Office 365 account.

[#5]

Any help? This is still an issue. I need to resolve this duplicate account issue ASAP as I can no longer access my works Teams channels.

[#6]

@robeggleston

So let's make it clear...

A Customer added you as a guest account in Teams on your own organization email.

You logged in with your account and you were able to see the customer's Teams environment/Channels/Files and you were able to chat with the customer.

Later, your organization bought subscriptions in Office365 and enabled you with Teams. You logged in, but now you do not have access to the customer's environment correct?

And, the customer is able to chat with you but you are not receiving the messages. Do you receive messages about missed conversations in your inbox (outlook)?

But you are able to log in to Teams for your own organization and are able to chat with your colleagues?

Let me know. Maybe we can connect via teams 🙂

Kind regards and stay healthy,

Mitchell Bakker

[#7]

@Mitchell Bakker 

Yes this is basically it!

1. Customer invited me as a guest to their Teams channel using my organisations email
2. This worked fine for a few weeks, but I got locked out with an 'Account/Username not found' error message
3. Then, in an attempt to fix my 'account not found' error, my organisation set me up with an Office 365 & Teams account and invited me to their Teams channel on the same email address
4. After that, I couldn't see my customers Teams channel. The customer could see me as a user in Teams, send me messages, delete me, re-invite me but the invitation links didn't work
5. Somehow, it started working again and I'm honestly not sure how. For a good while I could see both my Customer and my Organisations Teams channels
6. Then, yesterday, Teams logged me out automatically. I logged back in only to find that again, I could only see my organisations Teams channel!
7. The client has tried removing me as a user and re-inviting me but I don't receive the invite links.
8. Funnily enough, if I have an existing Teams Meeting invite in my calendar, looks like I might be able to attend the meeting.

Hope that makes sense. Also funnily enough, the first time around when I was locked out of my Customers account, the Customers support tech could direct message me in Teams and I'd see the message. This time around, it doesn't seem to be the case.

[#8]

Hi@Mitchell Bakker 

I have almost exactly the same issue here.    There was a guest account in a customer's domain created around 4-5 years for sharepoint access  - way before my own organization start using MS team.  That was for another project that had been completed quite some time.  
Now recently i started to have another project need close coordination and access to some of my customer documents.  I can see email to me saying i was invited to a "channel" of my customer but i could NOT access them using my "real" MS team account create by my organization (that would be my preferred account and not guest account).   Please may i ask how i could resolve this?   Many Thx.

William

[#9]

@robeggleston I seem to have the same Issue, only that in my case my office 365 account came first and the customer added me to their teams space afterwards with the same mail adress. 

Now whenever I sign into teams (even on a new computer) I am redirected to the customers login and I am signed in as a guest on the customers behalf. I am unable to access my own teams account from my company 😞 Did you ever get a solution to your problem?

[#10]

When you're automatically signed in surely you have the option to manually sign out from Teams? (top right corner). That should open up the prompt again. I assume this is happening on your desktop Teams and not using Teams on the web too. You should open up a InPrivate / Incognito window and go to https://teams.microsoft.com and verify the behavior. You can always (almost) leave another org. if you're a guest user there https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/user-help/my-account-portal-organizations-pa...

To reset all autostart settings run this https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/scripts/powershell-script-teams-reset-autostart

[#11]

@ChristianJBergstrom of course I can sign out, but that does not help anything.

Even sigining in on a completely new browser profile I get redirected to the single-sign-on-page of the customer immediately, because my mail adress is linked to that customer on microsoft site. So as soon as I login (does not matter what client I use) I always get moved to the customer. No chance of accessing the teams spaces of my own company. 

To me it seems that on Microsoft site your email adress can only be assigned to one teams space - and the last one wins.

[#12]

Please follow the above suggestions.

[#13]

Sorry - didn't see the bit about leaving an organisation. So now I am in one organisation (my own) - I guess there is no way of being in both and just dynamically switch between them (btw: no I am not using the desktop client at all - and additionally I am using teams on linux) In fact I am part of 4 Teams spaces, but I can separate three of them by using different browser profiles and different Mailadresses. the one above was the one where I couldn't do that.

[#14]

Yes, and you cannot leave your own organisation of course, because MS won't let you... 🙃

Good grief, MS verification and logins is basically Dante's Seventh Circle Of Hell, designed by jabby little devils.

I feel to commit violence after travelling in circles since July.

If you're an entrepreneur, don't ever try and have multiple MS accounts for your different businesses, MS simply cannot cope.

One should easily be able to toggle between any number of accounts in Teams just like you can for different user accounts on your laptop, and yet it appears to be impossible.

[#15]

These steps worked for me for Teams guest account that is the same as a user's regular enterprise Office 365 account.

1. Don’t use the Teams desktop app—this may work with the app as well, but I don’t want to get their desktop app involved, as multiple account requires signing in and out. Using a private browser window will not affect the desktop app settings.
2. use the web version in a private window—I recommend pasting a URL that links to something in the desired Team account into the browser address bar
3. Select Sign-in options at the bottom of the Sign In screen
4. Select Sign into an organization (bottom choice)
5. Enter xxxx.com in Find your organization
6. Enter the guest email address: YourRegularName@EmailAccount.com
7. Enter your usual MS 365 password
8. Accept the permissions
9. There will be a few screens talking about how to use Teams...

[#16]

@johnmark8080 I am doing it the same way, with 4 different Teams accounts at the moment. The issue in this thread was a bit different. One of my customers used my business mail (which is connected to Teams in our company) to add me to the Teams of HIS Company, so the same email adress was connected to two different teams accounts/Organisations, and even deleting one of these organisations still did not let me get back to my own organisation, so I was unable to work with Teams in my company. There was no solution from Microsoft to that. 
Two weeks back however it suddenly started to work again (with my own companies teams account), Maybe since I was logged of in the customers organisation for a few months already it removed me from that which in turn made my account available for my own organisation again. 

having multiple browser (I actually do not use privacy tabs, but multiple profiles) works fine as long as you have different mail adresses per Teams organisation.

[#17]

@ebertbd Sorry I misread your issue. I was able to start to duplicate your issue by repeating the steps outlined in your original post. I was able to "confuse" Teams by opening it in two separate browser instances. It refused to let me access both organizations at the same time except if one was in a private window.

I assume you mean that you are using browser profiles not Windows profiles. If you lose access to your primary user account again, I would clear the Windows cached credentials by pulling up the Credential Manager (type credential in the Windows type here to search box) and remove entries in the Windows Credentials section that appear to be related to Teams (described here). I was unable to differentiate the accounts on my computer, even though they are dated, because I was using private Browser windows and I don't think that I succeeding in adding my duplicate email at another organization to Teams when trying to replicate the issue you described. You may even try deleting your other cached Office 365 credentials. You will have to log back in so be sure to have your correct credentials before trying this, especially if your laptop is part of your organization. I'm not sure about the web credentials, but just for completeness, I would check there as well and remove any problematic entries. If the problem persists, and it wouldn't be too much work, I would ask to be deleted from the interfering organization's active users list, and I would delete all those cached credentials locally (be sure to have your credentials first) and try signing in again. If that works, then ask to have the problematic sign-on re-activated. This advice is untested. Just what I would try.

Too bad we can't use aliases to log in.

[#18]

@ebertbd I had some success using the the web version of Teams to access two different organizations using the same email.

I was able to use the team link to add the account. I haven't duplicated this in the desktop version and I don't have time to see how the notifications work.

Also, looking through the variety of complaints posted about this topic, it appears that the behavior of Teams changes over time. So mileage may vary.

I hope this helps.

[#19]

It definitely changed within the last few weeks - as I said I do not have that specific problem anymore. As an interesting small information. I do use Teams within different browser profiles (you were right about that) on... linux 🙂 so the windows profile will not have any impact on that 🙂 It is working fine now, and for now I am happy.