Office 365 Commercial, Windows 10, Azure AD, and You (Premium)

If you have an Office 365 commercial account, you can use it to sign-in to Windows 10 instead of using a Microsoft account. As you might expect, there are some gotchas.

Most readers are probably familiar with the fact that Windows 10 supports Microsoft account (MSA) sign-ins in addition to more traditional local accounts. In fact, in recent Windows 10 versions, Microsoft has made it very difficult to not use an MSA the first time you bring up a new PC: Microsoft really wants you to use an MSA. (I’ll be addressing that problem in the Windows 10 Field Guide soon.)

And there are good reasons for using your MSA with Windows 10*. An MSA sign-in automatically passes that sign-in through to apps like Microsoft Edge, the Microsoft Store, Mail, and Movies & TV. It’s more secure, because it can be protected with two-factor authentication (2FA) and take advantage of password-less sign-ins. And it supports settings sync, so that many (but sadly not all) of your personalization changes persist between PCs.

(ADD: To be clear, here I mean Windows 10 Pro of better; you can't sign-in to Active Directory, whether it's AAD or an on-premises version, using Windows 10 Home. --Paul)

Less well-understood, perhaps, is that Windows 10 also supports what it calls “work and school” accounts. These are really Azure Active Directory (Azure AD, or just AAD) accounts, which work a bit like MSAs in that they support automatic app sign-in, are more secure, and can support settings sync. But they’re also centrally managed by your organization, so policies will be applied to your PC when you sign-in, and those policies can control how Windows behaves.

Even less well-understood, I bet, is the fact that all Office 365 commercial accounts---from the inexpensive Office 365 Business Essentials subscription that I discussed the other day on up to the most expensive Office 365 and Microsoft 365 tiers---come with a free AAD account. And that means that any individual can theoretically sign-in to Windows 10 with that account instead of an MSA. (And you can technically mix and match, if you want. For example, you can sign-in to Windows with your Office 365/AAD account and then sign-in to individual apps with your MSA if you want.)

Those using a work or school account may be required to sign-in to Windows with this account, or they may simply have to sign-in to certain apps---like Mail or Calendar---with that app, in which case certain corporate/school policies will need to be applied to the PC as well. But if you’re an individual who signed up for an Office 365 Business Essentials subscription, perhaps, you might be curious if there is any advantage to signing-in to Windows this way when compare to using an MSA.

Put simply, there is not.

And unless you or your organization is paying for more than just the stock Office 365 account, there is one important limitation to using this account that I feel will make it unattractive to most: The free AAD acc...

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