How do i fix a broken account?

Matthew 40

My Microsoft Account recently got screwed up because of the Personal/Work/School on Microsoft Accounts.

basically, i somehow have two separate azure accounts now with the same email and password (a personal account, and a work/school account).

The work account is blank and i want to delete it.

The personal account has all of my work and colleagues work in it and i want to keep it.

How do i delete the work account?

Why does this so called feature exist in the first place? 99% of people use a different email address for work and home and therefore this distinction us a problem at best...

I can work around this in the browser by using a private tab to log in and selecting the correct account type, however many Azure integrated software packages (Visual Studio, Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer etc.) that i use, do not ask you for this distinction when you login, just user name and password.

Givary-MSFT 32,591 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-11-16T07:09:58.95+00:00
@Matthew Thank you for reaching out to us, As I understand you are having trouble with your Personal and Work accounts.

To delete your work account, you can follow these steps:

Sign in to the Azure portal with your personal account.

Click on your name in the top right corner and select "Switch Directory".

Select the directory that contains your work account.

Click on "Users" in the left-hand menu.

Find your work account in the list and click on it.

Click on the "Delete" button at the top of the page.

Follow the prompts to confirm the deletion.

Note: To delete work account from the directory, you need to have admin privileges of that directory, if you are not aware who is the admin of that directory/tenant where your work account exists, refer to this https://www.tachytelic.net/2019/07/list-office-365-global-administrators-powershell/ it has the steps which will help to find the email of the Global admin account of the tenant/directory.

As for why this feature exists, it's meant to help people who use both personal and work accounts to keep their data separate. However, I understand that it can be confusing and cause problems like the one you're experiencing.

To avoid this issue in the future, you can try using different email addresses for your personal and work accounts. Alternatively, you can use different browsers or browser profiles to keep your personal and work accounts separate when using Azure integrated software packages.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
Matthew 40 Reputation points

2023-11-20T03:54:58.3366667+00:00

Hi, Both accounts only have 1 directory in them and they are both different directories. They are not connected at all.
Matthew 40 Reputation points

2023-11-20T04:16:36.3866667+00:00

Ok, So from looking at the Microsoft Entra ID for each account, they both have a different list of users from my company, but the list on my "Work" account is very old, so perhaps someone at my work set this up incorrectly in two different accounts in the past somewhere, and the fact that i accidentally clicked on "work" account when installing a local copy of Power BI, somehow pushed my azure account to use the incorrect/old setting for the choice of Account/Tenant & Directory.
Givary-MSFT 32,591 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-12-05T05:19:37.1433333+00:00

@Matthew Apologies for the delayed response, wanted to check whether your issue has been resolved or not ? you need any further help, feel free to post back.

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How do i fix a broken account?

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