This includes business plans for Microsoft 365 including Outlook Web Access and OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Intune and Windows 10 devices that are connected to your organization's Azure Active Directory domain, as well as Microsoft Azure resources. What is a work or school account with Azure Active Directory?Ī work or school account is created by an organization using a business service that has Azure Active Directory as the authentication and authorization platform.

There is no organizational-level management of user accounts for creating and viewing users, resetting passwords etc. You used to be able to create a Microsoft Account using the same email address as your work or school account, but Microsoft have now blocked this to stop confusion between the two different identity services. In fact, you can even use a Gmail address to register for a Microsoft Account: You don't need to create a new email account or use the or domains for your new Microsoft Account. So, you will have a conflict if you try and create a Microsoft Account with a username that has already been taken. It's designed to scale to a broad base of consumer users across the globe, all in the one system. With a Microsoft Account, Microsoft controls and manages all of the configuration and settings of the Identity platform. You can even choose as a valid domain name for this service.Ī Microsoft Account can be created when you sign into a new Windows 10 computer for the first time.Ī Microsoft Account can be used to sign into Microsoft 365 home plans such as Microsoft 365 Personal, for access to Office applications, including the consumer version of OneDrive. A Microsoft Account can be used to sign in to, Office subscriptions, Skype, OneDrive, XBox Live, Bing, the Microsoft Store, Windows and MSN:Ĭonsumer services that use a Microsoft AccountĪ Microsoft Account can be created with a new email address and mailbox at. It's had other former names, like Microsoft Passport or a Microsoft Live Account and is sometimes referred to as a personal account. Microsoft's three main Identity platformsĪ Microsoft Account is the modern name given to the Identity system that provides authentication and authorization to Microsoft's consumer services. Interested in the difference between Active Directory and Azure Active Directory? Check out this article I wrote for A Cloud Guru.

In this article, we'll explore the differences between Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Accounts. Microsoft provides three main Identity services - Active Directory, Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Accounts.

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