I have two microsoft accounts but only want one

Question

I have two microsoft accounts but only want one

Bill Bachman 5

I have two Microsoft accounts, not sure how that happened. One is Microsoft 365 for home use, the other is a Microsoft Exchange Business Basic subscription account held with my domain admin company. Apart from not wanting to pay for two accounts, the Exchange account constantly and irritatingly throws up a "Password incorrect" warning box whenever I want to use my phone. I can just cancel the warning but sometimes it takes half a dozen tries to get it out of the way. I am afraid that if I cancel either one or the other of my accounts I will lose all my emails, which would be a disaster. Microsoft has made it as difficult as humanly possibly to actually get advice on this so I am wondering if anyone else has had this problem and can offer a solution. Thanks.

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Answer 1

EmilyS726 151.6K Independent Advisor

Hello

Microsoft personal and business products are two separate ecosystems, so, if you have a Microsoft 365 personal subscription and a business subscription, then they are two separate accounts and two separate products.

If you cancel the personal one, you could lose files and emails that take up the additional space beyond the free alllowed storage, but you would ave a grace period to download them.

If you cancel the business one, you can end up losing access by te end of the subscription and lose all files/data.

Regarding the constant prompt for password, it was a bug from a while ago but that bug was short lived. Are you the admin user for your business account? Do you have MFA set up for that account?

Bill Bachman 5 Reputation points

2025-08-27T03:56:42.42+00:00

Thanks for the speedy response, EmilyS726.

Both subscriptions are coming up for renewal and I can recall trying to cancel the business account last year, assuming all the emails were already duplicated in the personal account, but discovered that everything vanished. Luckily I got it all back before the administrator of the business account completely dumped my data, but I do not want to repeat that. To be honest I don't mind having two accounts, the cost is not significant -- but the constant prompt - which by the way only appears on my phone - is incredibly annoying, and if I could just get rid of what you describe as a short-lived bug I would be delighted. Any advice as to how to achieve that?? (and no, I do not have MFA on that account, just user name and password to access) I think the admin user for the business account might be Melbourne IT, who provide the Business Essentials package and also host my domain.

Thank you, Bill
EmilyS726 151.6K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2025-08-27T04:27:25.5933333+00:00

If you don’t have MFA set up for the business account, that is the issue for the phone log in.

Do you have access to admin.Microsoft.com? You need to enable MFA as it is required now by Microsoft.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/security-and-compliance/set-up-multi-factor-authentication?view=o365-worldwide
Bill Bachman 0 Reputation points

2025-08-27T23:10:16.0633333+00:00

Unfortunately the link in your second email yesterday yielded an error message. You were commenting on the need for MFA but I could only read part of it. Are you able to please try again? Thanks.
EmilyS726 151.6K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2025-08-27T23:57:14.9966667+00:00

Bill, don't read from the email notification - the content is cut off in the email. If you read it here directly (see above), the link is fine and it works.
Bill Bachman 5 Reputation points

2025-08-28T00:39:11.9066667+00:00

Thanks, I will follow up your suggestions.
EmilyS726 151.6K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2025-08-28T00:39:53.7533333+00:00

You are welcome. Good luck!

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I have two microsoft accounts but only want one

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