Related to my series on Windows 10 S, I’ve received a few questions about using a Microsoft Account (MSA) to sign-in to Windows 10.
As a bit of background, you may know that Microsoft prefers for individuals to sign-in to Windows 10 using an MSA, rather than use an old-school local account sign-in. There are a variety of good reasons to do so, including cross-PC settings sync and a seamless “pass through” sign-in when you use Store apps.
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But I’ve been advising readers to sign-in to Windows 10 with a local account the first time they use any given PC. Then, they can configure it properly—with a readable machine name, for example, which is important if you use OneDrive—and decide later if they want to sign-in to Windows 10 with their MSA or, alternatively, just sign-in to individual apps (and experiences like Cortana and OneDrive) as needed.
No one way of doing this will please everyone. But I don’t care about settings sync, and I use few enough Store apps that I don’t see the benefit of signing in to Windows 10 with an MSA. So I just sign-in to a few things as needed: OneDrive, Cortana, and the Store.
There’s a bit more nuance to this, but the following questions, and my answers to them, should help clear this up.
Zack writes.
In the “Windows S Basics” article you write “If you’ve read the Windows 10 Field Guide, you know that I generally recommend that users of Windows 10 Home or Pro not sign-in to the system with a Microsoft account (MSA)…” In the User Accounts section [of the book] I read that you strongly recommend not creating an MSA at setup, but I don’t see why not to use MSA.
The “why” of this is subjective: I don’t want to be seamlessly signed into something just because I opened an app. Instead, I’d like to be prompted for that usage, or explicitly choose to sign-in (or not). If you’re comfortable with the Microsoft ecosystem and use apps like Groove, Movies & TV, and so on, this may not be an issue. And you can just sign-in to Windows 10 with your MSA.
Derek writes.
What I wanted to know from your guide is how to do a fresh install of Windows 10 and try to use a local account as much as possible, and minimize the use of a Microsoft account, which the users don’t really want.
I understand that I can install Win10, initially log in with a local account, and then Store will require a MS account, but Store can use the MS account independently of the Windows login.
This is correct.
What about everything else, including OneDrive, Cortana, etc.?
The short answer goes like this:
You can sign-in to any app (or experience, like OneDrive) that requires/recommends an MSA on an app by app basis. With one exception: Microsoft Edge. If you want to sync your Edge settings between PCs, you must sign-in to Windows itself with an MSA. Not sure why that’s the case, but it is. Everything else will work fine.
You do need to be careful when you sign-in to an app using your MSA because Microsoft uses that as an opportunity to try and get you to just sign-in to Windows. But it’s easy enough to spot if you’re paying attention at that one moment.
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Ultimately, this just boils down to individual choice and need. And I’m happy that Microsoft makes this choice possible: You can use Windows 10 very effectively without needing to sign-in to an MSA. And those that do choose to use MSA will have a seamless experience across PCs.
I’m revising the Windows 10 Field Guide this summer and thanks to the Fall Creators Update and Windows 10 S, I will again be reevaluating my advice and my own way to doing things. But I suspect I’ll need to be more explicit the book about both the “why” and the “how.” Either way, I’ll accommodate both ways of doing things.
Stooks
<p>If you use enough services then MSA is just easier. I use the store for a few apps, outlook.com is my primary email account, Xbox is my gaming platform of choice and I subscribe to Office 365 Home and store all of my documents on Onedrive. </p><p><br></p><p>I log into Chrome with my Google account and when I use my Mac I login with my iCloud account.</p>