Summary
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Microsoft accounts are for personal use, and for accessing services like Outlook.com, Xbox or Skype.
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Microsoft work and school accounts are for organizations that use Microsoft 365 for business.
What is a Microsoft account?
What is a Microsoft Entra work or school account?
A Microsoft work or school account is created in your organization by an administrator.
Work or school accounts are often associated with Microsoft 365 for business or Microsoft 365 Education products.
Which account to use when signing in
When you sign in to a Microsoft service, the sign in screen looks up the account type for you, and signs you in to the correct service.
You can only sign in to the Microsoft service that your account is set up for.
Notes:
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If you visit Outlook.com and sign in with your work or school account, you’ll be redirected to your work or school mailbox.
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If you try to use your Microsoft account to sign in to a business service, you'll receive an error.
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There’s no synchronization of user account information between personal and work or school accounts.
For issues when signing in to your Microsoft account, see I can't sign in to my Microsoft account.
For issues when signing in to your work or school account, see I can't sign in to my work or school account.
Personal accounts can be work or school guest accounts
Even though you can't synchronize Microsoft accounts into your Entra active directory (or vice versa), you can invite someone as a guest user into your Microsoft Entra organization using their Microsoft account or other third-party email address.
These users appear in your directory with a guest account notation, but you can’t perform any user administration tasks on their account, like renaming them or resetting their password. This is useful for inviting external people to collaborate in some Microsoft 365 services, like Teams, OneDrive, or SharePoint.
Work and school accounts have more advanced security and compliance tools to protect sensitive organization data.
Work or school accounts are often associated with Microsoft 365 for business or Microsoft 365 Education products and are managed by an administrator responsible for assigning user accounts and Microsoft 365 licenses to people in their organization.
When you first sign up for a Microsoft business product like Microsoft 365 for business, you get an email address that ends with .onmicrosoft.com. You can use that address or customize it by adding your own domain (you@FourthCoffee.com).
With Microsoft Entra, Microsoft provides the identity platform as a service, but you can modify some of the configuration and settings, such as adding your own custom domain name (@contoso.com) or requiring multi-factor authentication. Your Microsoft Entra instance is available via the Microsoft Entra admin center and other management tools like PowerShell, the Azure CLI and the REST API. You can also monitor and investigate advanced security events with tools like Microsoft Sentinel.
Note: For small business products, the person who buys and pays for the subscription is automatically an administrator.
See also
Learn more about Microsoft personal accounts
How to sign in to a Microsoft account
Link your GitHub account and Microsoft account
