Users now have multiple online accounts – work and personal. If a user wants to use a Microsoft 365 app, user should either login using the personal Microsoft account or use organization provided Azure AD account. Once logged in, to use a different account, user must either sign out, use an InPrivate browser window, or a different browser or device altogether.
To solve this issue, Microsoft is today announcing account switching support for Microsoft 365 web apps. With this support, a user can sign into multiple accounts in the same browser, and easily switch between the accounts without needing to sign out and sign back in.
Over the next few months, Microsoft will be rolling out this feature worldwide on Office.com, Word, Excel, PowerPoint for the web, Outlook on the web, OneDrive for the web, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 admin center.
Here’s how this account switching experience works:
- Access any of the Microsoft 365 web apps referenced above and click on the account manager located in the top right corner.
- You can add a new account or switch to an existing signed-in account in the browser.
- Upon a successful add or switch, the page will refresh with content from the new account in the same browser tab.
- If a user ends up with two or more browser app tabs with different accounts, users will be notified to refresh the tabs with non-active accounts.
Microsoft also confirmed that this account switching feature is not available for Microsoft 365 operated via 21Vianet, or Microsoft 365 Government and Germany cloud environments.