Working with multiple work accounts on a windows 10 device

Brass Contributor

Hello everyone

 

I think it's time for me to vent my frustration about working with multiple work/education accounts on a windows 10 device...

 

First of all, I have 3 Microsoft Accounts (1x Personal; 1x Work; 1x Education) and oh boy, it's very very frustrating to get all these 3 Accounts work together on the same windows 10 device with one Userprofile.

 

Working with my Personal and Work (or Education) account on the same device works fine, no problems, but as soon as I add additionally either my Work or Education Account in the Windows 10 settings under "Account > Email & accounts" things starting to get complicated.

  • Sync issues across every app that uses one of these work/education accounts (classic Office Apps, ToDo, Edge, OneNote)
  • Upload blocks in the office apps (Word, Excel...) & Credential Errors
  • 4x/day a notification toast that my work accounts need to fix... blabla -> I click okay, now fix it -> Accounts fixed -> later in the day, same error occurs...

 

I just want to use all my accounts on the same device with the same Userprofile, I really love the Microsoft 365 Platform but these things driving me crazy.

 

I had a time, in there I worked completely online, but yeah, we all know how cool it is to work with the online versions of Office Apps. I also tried multi-bootable windows installations or multiple Userprofiles and it worked, but I often need to access files/services that are stored in the OneDrive from my Education Account or vise versa, so it's really impracticable.

 

Then I tried to link my accounts just in these apps where I need it, but Windows 10 really have fun on it to write in my accounts under the named windows 10 settings location. 

 

Has anyone a best practice, tips/tricks etc. everything helps... Thanks.

12 Replies
Hi,
I would just add my work account only to apps that I want to use, there is a checkbox that if you leave it checked, it will let apps use it by default.
if you uncheck it, you will be able to log in to each app separately using your work account so not all apps will have access to it.
for Edge browser, what's the problem exactly?
Hi,
I tried this as well, but this checkbox where I can say "let your organization manage your device" or something (I don't know the right sentence) does not appear anymore, idk why but I know which checkbox you mean.

I recently reset my whole machine (again) to make a clean setup, but this checkbox never appeared. Even when I signed in through e.g Word or Excel.

In edge chromium I noticed that my accounts (just the work and/or education profiles) have issues to sync. I often get a message that there are problems with syncing or that the sync option completely lost its function, in terms of activating the sync function at all. But I think, this is more a problem on the Microsoft sync services and not that I have multiple accounts linked to my device. At this time, all edge profiles are synchronized and working but I'm just waiting for the issues to appear again...

Same issue@preuley30 

Any fix available ?

Same here - As a IT PM working via a 3rd party, I regularly have 3 work Office 365 accounts all using TEAMs & SharePoint for document storage. Within a single hour I can be build templates (for myself), complete a proposal (for my handlers) and accessing project documents (for a project client). Ive tried using Edge's save a website as an app, which worked for a while - except the site names and icons are all the same by default - but even this has stopped working.

I've just lost another half hour trying to get into my handlers account (without any success - Firefox and edge both helpfully remember who I am and forget my id at my handlers)

Surely this isn't the norm, I feel like a noob.

Someone must know where we can find best practice guide, tips/tricks etc. YouTube, anything that might help...
Hey Preuley30 - did you ever sort out your problem?
@Aneesh_KS1987 @KiwiPM
Sorry Guys, I have no fix available. Because I am no longer a student, I just now have a work and a personal account which get along on the same Userprofile.
is using a virtual machine for extra work account out of question?

Hey @OddGentleman I have not used virtual machines before but understand the concept - It just seems like an extreme way for contractors across the globe to have to work!  There must be a simple way to switch between accounts using installed apps (Office 365, TEAMs and even MS Project...)

I tried installing a browser TEAMs site as an App (https://youtu.be/XiKPKrWGgf4) from Kevin Stratvert, 2 years ago... and it seemed to work for a while, but now my windows account seems to take over and only allow the app to open the version of 365 / Team tenant I own???

In this short video, learn how to open several windows of Microsoft Teams. You can use this if you have multiple accounts, need to join more than one meeting at a time, or want to view multiple channels simultaneously. Watch all of my videos on Microsoft Teams: ...

@KiwiPM 

The proper way would be for all contractors to have access to your domain, resources and communication, via dedicated accounts or as guests. 

Our contractors can access virtual machines simply through the browser - via Citrix. We keep communication in Teams. 

I believe you can also use different browser for each Microsoft (work) account. That's if you are able to work 100% in the web apps. 

Thanks, but if you can't tell already, I am not a system administrator or have any formal IS background or training.
I do not host any teams on my domain, rather work in TEAMs setup by my client's where they set me up as an owner of their project team. One of my biggest issues is even if I am booking a meeting in a client's domain (when I am using Outlook app, and book the meeting using their email address + calendar (@client.com etc.), I often find I can't start the Teams meeting itself and get a prompt saying someone will let me in once the meeting starts... Only way around that I can find is to be logged into the client teams using a browser and be logged into my @KiwiPM.com domain on the TEAMs App itself - then the meeting I booked (using their email address, lets me start the meeting) It as though my windows account is not recognizing the account, I booked the meeting under and or thinks I am someone else joining the meeting I booked. Even though I didn't invite @KiwiPM to the meeting? - Might have to try using different browsers (1 in Edge, 1 in Firefox, 1 in Chrome...)
I have FOUR Microsoft Accounts and I cannot get them to work effectively without pulling my hair out. The biggest issue is the 2 Factor. I logon with one account and it goes to the 2 Factor for my OTHER Account. No idea why.
1 - Personal
2 - Work Employer Teams account with Email
3 - Domain Azure Account for our Client domain (Laptop is in this Domain) - Single Sign on Account.
4 - 2nd Domain (Forest Trusted) Office 365 Email Account for our Client O365 Email

I have 2 Outlooks, 2 Teams, 1 Azure, 1 Configuration Mgr and my Personal.

I think Microsoft needs a BETTER solution for sure for switching accounts.

I used to see these threads and laugh and say, why don't you guys all switch to Google suites. I used to run 8 google accounts in parallel. It was easy (insane, right?!)...
but then last year my work decides to switch from Gsuite to O365.
Followed by my education - which is a double whammy problem as I'm doing a PhD and working at the same place, so those are 3 accounts went from Gsuite to O365. 2x work, 1x education.

The first discovery: I cannot do work on my phone. In the world of Edge mobile, there can only be one: either work or education. Thank you Microsoft for rubbing this ideal world up our faces, where everyone has one career and function in life.

I have a personal Microsoft which is exclusively used for the family xbox. I didn't want to drag family into this... but, oh well.

Unlike some of you here, I'm a tech savvy, like one of those geeks who are the first to die in the office when the bad guy attacks? Yearh, that's me. I self taught music and BASIC, and coded my first digital jukebox when I was 5 years old. I've used MS products since the early 90s. So hear me out.

Historically, Microsoft offers incredible breadth and depth of features in its products, at the expense of simplicity. If you want minimalism... who am I kidding, you wouldn't even be reading this. We love Microsoft because we love the awesomeness of MS Word and Powerpoint (and hate Google Docs and Slides), right?!

The main reason of this issue is the conflict between the identity authentication between the Microsoft apps on the devices and the Microsoft identity you have signed in on the cloud. So, the easiest way to mitigate all of these issues was to go cloudful. (Hey internet, is this the first time someone uses the term cloudful in this context?)

Anyway. Simple direct solution: Multiple Edge profiles in the same PC account. Each profile syncs to a different MS account. No offline Office apps at all. In fact, Uninstall them all. Remove all onedrives even. All microsoft accounts. Go local Userprofile if you want to keep this to an extreme. I personally purchased the M365 family subscription and kept my personal profile as the main and only MS Account on the device apps. The "your account needs fixing" and all the consequential missing emails and headache was much more costly to me (true story).

You could create folders inside your own personal onedrive, and make one folder for each MS account, and give edit access of each folder to the that account. That's guaranteed to work this way, but not the other way around. So if you want to access a file that's shared with your work account? you can only do so in the edge browser of that profile.

You could add the multiple Onedrives only, with a slight risk of sync issues. For me it is minimal, less than once a month a glitch happens in Onedrive accounts, nothing that a restart doesn't fix though. The problem usually happens if you cannot check off the "Don't let my organization manage my apps." and only use the login to Onedrive. if you can't find the option it could be because the IT admin disabled it from that domain, and that might be the reason why it tries to eat over the other authentications.

As to outlook app? It's a lost cause. Stay on the web. I have used Outlook since 1995, and I can't tell you how many bitter times I had to rescue a corrupted outlook profile over the last 25 years. For me or for a client. It's nasty. Even with a weekly or daily NAS, the headache of losing sometimes a whole business day of work to restore is insane. Outlook as a desktop app is just not fit for large businesses. period. If you have thousands of emails, crashing is just a matter of time. I have given every new major version and update a chance since 1995 and just this past few months a client had their outlook profile crash, completely lost data, on windows 11 and latest version.

As to Teams. Oh man. This is the child of the new wife that Microsoft is caring a bit too much for on the expense of all the other family members.
I mean, yes, it's young. Cute. Ok it has got potential, but the amount of hostile takeover Teams causes on the other Microsoft apps is insane. Outlook Calendar? forget it, Teams Calendar is here and does not like to share. Full O365 policies? Teams comes with its own set of policies. It turned out in one company that despite the policies set to prevent sharing certain sensitive company files via onedrive and outlook with certain external senders or domains... I showed them how their own users could use their own MS work teams to share those files just like that, because the policy wasn't inherited.
Sharepoint and onedrive? don't even think about it. At start I thought, those programmers at Microsoft need to share the same water cooler. Now I could swear they have war rooms planning to take each other down lol.

Anyway, if you're just a normal human trying ambitiously to start their own little beautiful thing and needed some quick way to setup an email or writing tool and ended up in here... all I can say is, I'm sorry. This isn't a Microsoft issue, nor software issue. It is a human thing issue. We created complicated bureaucracies thousands of years before computers. We have thousands of human languages, and we created hundreds of computer languages, with endless possibilities of potential, and very little use for most of them. Engineering schools did not teach people that every feature has a price on the long run. It's literally harder and more expensive to get a minimalist design that works well. It's like you have to pay some designers to just please stop adding more features.
Isn't it ironic that we claim that we use only 5% of our brain - yet we design systems where we only end up needing 5% of them?

Lastly, if it all fails? separate Userprofiles is the way to go, and say goodbye to multitasking across different jobs.

You have money to buy your peace of mind? Buy a device per each work (or demand a work computer/phone if you're in a position to do so.) Single User. Single Device. Single Account.

You have ADHD? God help us all.