Understanding Microsoft Work And Personal Accounts. Microsoft has two different types of accounts. Many of you have credentials an email address and password for both of them. Years of marketing and branding blunders have made it very difficult to describe how Microsoft has organized these accounts. Centralized File Movement Tracking Information System. Many people are frustrated because they cannot understand what accounts they have or where each one is supposed to be used. Im going to describe Microsofts work and personal accounts as clearly as possible. For reasons Ill touch on below, Im going to refer to them as Microsoft Work and Microsoft Personal. This affects almost everyone in small businesses. Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' title='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' />If you have a business Office 3. Its a bit of a maze. Lets see if we can find a way through. A helpful analogy  An overview of Microsoft work and personal accounts   Work or school account Created by your IT department   Personal account Created by you  The overlap between Microsoft work and personal services   Logging into a Windows 1. Buying a license for Microsoft Office   Storing files online in One. Drive   Using Skype  Connect Windows 1. Youre currently subscribed to some eWEEK features and just need to create a username and password. BibMe Free Bibliography Citation Maker MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard. Daily updated digital multimedia news, covering DVD, next generation optical storage formats, P2P, legal issues and much more. Watch breaking news videos, viral videos and original video clips on CNN. A final note. A helpful analogy. Lets say you have a Google account and an Apple ID. Your account login for each is an email address and a password. Those two accounts offer overlapping services. If you have an i. Microsoft Office has dominated the market of text documents, spreadsheets and slide shows for years, and for good reason its one of the very best. However. Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican official in charge of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, has now penned an editorial urging the public not to. Tell me about the issue and Ill help you find the solution you need. Phone, you might upload your photos to i. Cloud connected to your Apple ID and upload your photos to Google Photos connected to your Google account. Google and Apple both run email services and offer places to store files online. TheINQUIRER publishes daily news, reviews on the latest gadgets and devices, and INQdepth articles for tech buffs and hobbyists. ZD3E82U/VLppSsXl5KI/AAAAAAAABrM/69MbZMuEplA/s1600/10931325_413162092183997_6367699418031555711_n.jpg' alt='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' title='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' />You use the services from each company that make sense for you and ignore the ones youre not using. For example, if your Google account login is yournamegmail. Microsoft%20Office%20Professional%20Plus%202010%20Final.jpg' alt='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' title='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' />Gmail for email but its not required. You dont find that confusing. Google and Apple are different companies, right It makes sense that logging into a Google account connects you to different things than logging in to Apple services with your Apple ID. Similarly imagine that you have an Amazon account and a New York Times account. You log into each one with the same email address. You might use the same password, you might use a different password. Again, its obvious that these are two completely separate services. Your login credentials the email address and password are just a way to identify you in each system. Okay, now for the leap of faith. Free Download Game Pc Full Version Feeding Frenzy 3'>Free Download Game Pc Full Version Feeding Frenzy 3. Start out thinking of Microsofts work and personal accounts as completely unrelated credentials for two different companies. Microsoft Work is as different from Microsoft Personal as Google is from Apple. Obviously its less intuitive because theyre both run by Microsoft, but when you log in with a Microsoft work or school account, you are connected to completely different services than if you log in with a Microsoft personal account. An overview of Microsoft work and personal accounts. Lets start with the vocabulary, the part that Microsoft handles very poorly. The picture above shows you the words that Microsoft uses today to describe its two different accounts. Work or school account Created by your IT departmentIm calling it Microsoft Work in this article. Microsoft runs an extensive set of services for businesses from small business to huge enterprises. This account is tied to your company. If you change jobs or change your business, your Microsoft Work account will change. This side of Microsoft includes Office 3. Azure cloud services, Sharepoint, and much more. If you have a business Office 3. Ko/SlwMoscZjkI/AAAAAAAAAE0/oyUB5bwVm4A/s400/19.Microsoft+Onenote+2010.jpg' alt='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' title='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' />Microsoft Work account. Microsoft also offers discounted services to college students and runs those through this database. Thats why it has to call it a work or school account. Microsoft has also called it an organizational account at times. At one time it made sense to call this type of account an Office 3. Thats no longer accurate. The name Office 3. Personal account Created by youIm calling it Microsoft Personal in this article. Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' title='Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition - Working Tested' />This is frequently referred to as a Microsoft account. This account is intended to be your long term personal relationship with Microsoft. This is the one that youll use continuously regardless of who your employer is from year to year. If your Windows 1. Microsoft Personal account. This may change on new company computers in the next few years, as discussed below. If you have an Outlook. Microsoft Personal account. The overlap between Microsoft work and personal services. Your mental picture, then, should be that Microsoft Work is a company on one side of Seattle and Microsoft Personal is a different company on the other side of Seattle. As it happens, both companies offer some very similar services. Your experience with each service depends on whether you log in with your Microsoft Work credentials or your Microsoft Personal credentials. Here are some of the overlapping services. Logging into a Windows 1. When you log into Windows with a password, some computer somewhere decides whether youve put in the right password and have permission to log in. On an individual Windows 7 computer, it was the computer itself that decided. In a business with a domain server, its the server that decides whether you can log in. When you set up a Windows 1. Microsoft personal account. Your computer then checks with the Microsoft personal online servers to see if youre using the right password. If so, you can log in. It looks like this during setup. Now, though, theres another option when you set up a Windows 1. Professional or Enterprise computer. This comes up before the Microsoft account sign in screen. You wont see this on computers running Windows 1. Home. If you or your IT department identify the computer as owned by the organization, then one of the options is to log in with a Microsoft work account. Your computer then checks with the Microsoft work online servers to authenticate you. Pro tip Choosing organization allows the PC to be joined to a domain during setup. The next choice is between Azure AD or a local domain. The Azure AD choice is built on Azure Active Directory, which Microsoft is exposing for all companies with a business Office 3. Azure Active Directory is the glue that will enable single sign on for business Office 3. Box, Salesforce, and more cloud services. If youre supporting confused users, note that the next window does not say anything about work or school account or business Office 3. Instead it says Join Azure AD, which youve barely heard of and your users know nothing about. Heres a longer description. Buying a license for Microsoft Office. If your company has a business Office 3. Office programs WordExcelOutlooketc. Microsoft work account. The Office program licenses are included in some business Office 3. Office 3. 65 Business Premium, Office 3. Enterprise E3 and E5 or can be purchased on their own Office 3. Business, Office 3. Pro. Plus. If you are an individual, then you can buy licenses for the Office programs that are associated with your Microsoft personal account. You can buy Office 3. Personal for one computer, or Office 3. Home for up to five computers. Its up to you to remember which account you used to license Microsoft Office. Its frankly not easy to tell after the program is installed there are clues in the Office programs when you click on File Account, but its not exactly intuitive. An important point that makes it more confusing this concerns the license for the Office programs.