Merging Accounts

Question

I've come to realize I have both a free Microsoft 365 account AND a paid Microsoft 365 account. Each has a separate email address connected to it. Is there a way to merge the accounts? Most of the OneDrive contents are attached to the free account.

Answer 1

Currently, there is no direct method to merge two separate Microsoft 365 accounts (one free and one paid) into a single account. However, you can manage your accounts by adding a personal Microsoft account to your work or school account, which allows you to maintain access to your learning history and credentials. If you need to transfer files from your free account to your paid account, you can manually download the files from OneDrive associated with the free account and then upload them to the OneDrive of your paid account.

For more detailed guidance on managing your Microsoft Learn profile and accounts, you can refer to the resources provided by Microsoft.

Answer 2

Hello,

I assume these are both personal accounts?

Microsoft doesn't allow accounts merge, whether they are personal, or work/school accounts.

You can use the instruction below here to transfer your OneDrive files to the paid account.

To do so, go to www.onedrive.com, sign into the free account. Download the content there. You might need to break it down into batches as Microsoft has download quota for OneDRive. The web version has a 20GB limit for individual downloads from a zip file. For bulk downloads, the total number of items is also limited to 10,000 files.

Once downloaded, you can download the OneDrive desktop app, sign into the paid account. Once set up, move those downloaded files into the OneDrive folder in your File Explorer, and that will sync to the paid account's OneDrive.