move cloud data to different account

Question

I want to move my cloud data from an old account to a new one, or change the user log in on the old one to the new one.

Answer 1

Hello,

Are these two accounts both personal, or one is personal and one is business, or are they both business accounts?

Or, do you just need to change the email address you use to sign into the Microsoft account? If so, the new email address you want to change to, is it an outlook.com or hotmail.com address, or third party email address?

This information will help me determine what you options as there can be different instructions.

Answer 2

Cloud data in Microsoft services cannot be merged between accounts or simply “re‑assigned” to a different sign‑in. Data must be moved service by service, and the original account and its purchases remain separate.

For Microsoft 365 data, the supported approach is to manually transfer content from the old account to the new one:

1. Email, contacts, calendar, tasks (Outlook)
   • Export or move Outlook data from the old account and import it into the new account.
   • Follow the guidance in “Find and transfer Outlook data files from one computer to another” (linked from the manual transfer article) to move .pst/.ost data into the new profile.
2. OneDrive files
   • Sign in to the old Microsoft 365 account and sync or download the OneDrive content to a local computer.
   • Then sign in with the new Microsoft 365 account and upload/sync those files into the new account’s OneDrive, as described under “OneDrive data” in the manual transfer guidance.
3. OneNote
   • Back up existing OneNote notebooks from the old account.
   • Restore those backups into the new account using the OneNote backup/restore steps referenced in the manual transfer article.
4. Other Microsoft 365 data
   • For SharePoint or other workloads, follow similar copy/sync patterns: sign in to both tenants in separate browser sessions and copy content between them as described in the manual transfer overview.

Changing the sign‑in (alias) to “convert” one account into another is not supported for merging data or subscriptions. Existing Microsoft accounts cannot be merged, and purchases or stored data under one account cannot be moved into another by changing the login name alone. Where needed, keep the old account active for historical access while using the new account going forward, and manually move only the data that needs to follow the user.

---

References:

• Transfer data manually between Microsoft 365 accounts
• I realize I have 2 different accounts. How do I combine the 2? - Microsoft Q&A
• How to add an existing outlook.com account to my existing microsoft account? - Microsoft Q&A