During the windows 11 home out of box experience, how can I use my work microsoft account

Dr. Ryan Luke 0 Reputation points
2025-02-24T17:04:46.6866667+00:00

Windows 11 Home Out of Box experience does not allow you to use your Microsoft work or school address. This usually requires the Pro version. Is there a way to use my work or school email address during the initial out of box experience windows 11 setup

Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | User experience | Other
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  1. Michael Taylor 60,346 Reputation points
    2025-02-24T17:25:09.5466667+00:00

    In order to add a work or school account to Windows you must effectively have the device join the domain supporting that account. This is required for security reasons. The top reason being that your work/school account would then have access to work/school stuff and organizations need to have policies in place to manage access to that information. Without requiring your device to "join" the domain then there would be no way to enforce this which could introduce security and legal issues.

    Home isn't supported on domains so you have to have Pro or higher. This is by design so there is no workaround. But that doesn't mean you cannot add work/school accounts to your computer necessarily. Your login account would need to be a personal MS account but you can then add additional accounts to your existing account. This would give you access to those resources when using certain apps like Office or Teams. But whether you can add the additional account is still dependent upon the policies of the organization in question. In general it won't work so you'll be stuck logging in using your work/school account to the web sites that you need access to and not be able to link the accounts in Windows directly. But it doesn't hurt to try it once your login account is set up.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-26T05:34:49.32+00:00

    Hi Dr. Ryan Luke,

    Thanks for your post. Basically, Windows 11 Home is designed for family or community users. Work or school account is for the enterprise account.

    Whether you upgrade from a previous version of Windows, purchase a new device preinstalled with Windows 11 or perform a clean install, your first experience will be the OOBE. Also known as the Out of Box Experience, this is where you get the chance to introduce yourself to Windows or customize certain functionality before you reach the desktop. This can sometimes include creating or signing into a user account, connecting a wireless network or business domain, optimizing the device for specific activities such as work, education or gaming.

    You can follow the article for the OOBE guide. How to: Complete the Windows 11 Out of Box Experience - Microsoft Community

    Best Regards,

    Ian Xue


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