Can't log into my.visualstudio.com or create Microsoft Account, possibly due to Azure AD. What to do?

Question

Some coworkers have new Visual Studio licenses and they've tried logging into my.visualstudio.com with the email addresses that the licences are tied to.

When doing so, the following error message appears: "This username may be incorrect. Make sure you typed it correctly. Otherwise, contact your admin."

We're then told that there has to be a Microsoft Account tied to the email addresses. When trying to create Microsoft Accounts, they get the message "You can't sign up here with a work or school email address".

I then found this blog post, which says:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/09/15/cleaning-up-the-azure-ad-and-microsoft-account-overlap/

I quote: "Starting today, we're blocking the ability to create a new personal Microsoft account using a work/school email address, when the email domain is configured in Azure AD. What does this mean? If your organization uses Office 365 or other business services from Microsoft that rely on Azure AD, and if you've added a domain name to your Azure AD tenant, users will no longer be able to create a new personal Microsoft account using an email address in your domain."

We use Office 365 and added our domain name to it, so I'm guessing this is the problem. But how do we get around this problem so they can use Visual Studio?

Answer 1

I access mine via a personal microsoft account. This sort of error is common when you logon to multiple microsoft accounts on a given pc. I'd also try from a new In-Private browser session to work around this microsoft account confusion. Visual studio subscription support is not supported here on QnA. You can submit a ticket here.
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/subscriptions/support/

--please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

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Regards, Dave Patrick ....
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows Server] Datacenter Management

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