Can't remove a Work or School account from Windows 10

Question

This scenario occurs when you sign in with a personal Microsoft Account, and then add a Work or School organisational (Office 365) account.

The aim is to remove a Work or School Account from the PC, so that a different Work or School account can be used.

You should be signing in with a Personal Microsoft Account, and the PC should not be on a domain to reproduce this.

Steps to repro

1. Create a login on the PC using your Personal Microsoft Account
2. Open Settings > Accounts > Access work or school
3. Click "Connect"
4. Enter the details for your Work or School Organisational Account (NOT another Personal MSA)

This will then pull down the policy etc. and link the account to Windows. Seems to work fine, but then if you want to remove the account it is impossible. Try this:

1. Open Settings > Accounts > Access work or school
2. Click on the Organisational account you added previously
3. Click on "Disconnect"
4. A prompt will appear asking if you are sure
5. Click Yes
6. A further prompt will appear asking you to disconnect from the organisation
7. Click Disconnect
8. A yellow error message says "This PC isn't joined to a domain"

This does not appear to be the correct behaviour - It should be possible to remove the account here. The message is technically correct...The device is not on a domain, but this should not stop the account being removed.

What I am trying to do, is disconnect one account and add a different one. Adding two Work or School accounts does not seem to work, so removing the old one first is the only option but this is impossible due to the above mentioned error.

Anybody know how to get around this without wiping the whole device?

Moved from: Windows / Windows 10 / Network & internet / PC

Answer 1

I don't know if you are still having this issue, but I was able to fix this issue by using these steps.

1. Go to settings window
2. Select "Accounts"
3. Select "Access work or school"
4. This should show a window where you can select the account and choose disconnect.

Answer 2

I found a solution for this, it worked for me on multiple devices and accounts.

I thought of removing the account from the Microsoft account and switch to local to see if that would make a difference. At first I thought this would disrupt the account and break things, but on a test PC I performed it as a test and it worked. Before continuing make sure the account in question is an Administrator

Steps:

• Settings, Accounts
• Select "instead log on with a local account" and follow the steps
• Then logon, go back to accounts, and go to Access to work and school account
• Retry the remove and it will work
• Last step, go back and change logon to be with Microsoft Account instead of local account

Reference:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/09051278-3b01-4537-ac81-1bb417f8b6ea/cant-remove-a-work-or-school-account-from-windows-10?forum=win10itprosecurity

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Note: Microsoft has updated information in this reply to benefit users facing this issue.

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Answer 3

I'm still getting the error reported by SeanSeven. I added the account by mistake and cancelled halfway through because I didn't want to connect my system to the domain.

For a long time this didn't bother me. The account was there but not activated and I couldn't care less, but now I've updated to the next windows version (enabled windows insider, version 1709 OS Build 16299.15) and I'm getting a constant popup telling me to fix it. I don't want to fix it, I want to remove it!

In the popup that allows me to disconnect from the Work account it tells me this:

https://imgur.com/lKYw85C

How can I simple remove it?

Answer 4

I am getting the same error when I try to remove an Office 365 work account. Please see attached screen shot.

I do not have any family or other accounts listed as you asked. 

One thing that may be different with my setup is that my personal Microsoft Account uses the same email as my work  O365 account. I do not know that this has any relationship, I'm just throwing it out there in case it might.

Any help would be appreciated.