What do I need to do and understand if I have multiple Microsoft 365 accounts?


Below are the steps/process to follow if you have multiple Microsoft 365 accounts such as a 'Personal' and 'Work or School' account.



TABLE OF CONTENTS


Summary


In some instances, staff may have created their own Microsoft account and linked it to their AOC issued email address. Accounts that are set up this way are completely separate from the Microsoft account that is issued by AOC and as a result is a source of confusion when trying to access various M365 resources. 

 

For accessing AOC hosted M365 resources, you will always need to use your ‘Work or School’ account.


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Symptom


You have been given access to some 3rd party online resources, typically through a vendor or a different State Agency, and recently you have been experiencing one or more of these issues with accessing those resources: 

  • When you try to access the resource, you notice you’re being prompted with a screen asking you which account you want to use. 
  • This is a clear indicator that you have 2 different Microsoft account types tied to the same email address.   
  • Sometimes when you sign in you are alerted that your account does not have sufficient permission or that it could not be found. You check with the 3rd party and they find that your email address is listed in their tenant. An example of what this might look like:

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Cause


This may happen because you have two different account types registered with Microsoft that use the same email address; a ‘Personal’ type and a ‘Work or School’ type. 

 

When you were given access to a particular resource, especially by a 3rd party (such as a vendor or other State Agency) it is possible that your ‘Personal’ account was the one that was used to claim that access. Now, when you sign in with your ‘Work or School’ account you are no longer able to access the same material. 

 

The ‘Work or School’ type is the only supportable account and is the same account that you use to sign in to your workstation and email. A ‘Personal’ account type should be avoided as it introduces issues such as this.


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Solution 


The solution to this problem is going to require work on both yours and the 3rd parties’ part. If you happen to have access to O365 resources from multiple agencies that reside within the Executive Branch, you may only need to do this process one time as those agencies are all part of the same system.

 

First you will need to reach out to the 3rd party to ask them to recreate your guest account in their environment. Generally, they will need to:

  1. Record your current access level (SharePoint, Teams, Azure Security Groups, etc)
  2. Delete the old guest account
  3. Recreate the new guest account
  4. Reconfigure the access that was recorded in step 1

 

After your new guest account is created, you will receive an invitation to access their environment. This invite should come in via email. When you accept the invite, you must be signed in with your ‘Work or School’ account. If you accept the invite while you are logged in with your ‘Personal’ type account, then this process will need to be repeated so that you can connect your ‘Work or School’ account. 


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Cleaning Up 


After you have gone through each of the 3rd parties that have given you access to their environment, you may continue to get prompted to choose an account when you sign in. In this case, you should see a message that says ‘Tired of seeing this? Rename your personal Microsoft account.’ Click on that link and follow the steps to change your Personal account type. After you do this, you will no longer see this account selection popup. 


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