Microsoft: You need to fix your Skype and Microsoft account issues, this is insane

Microsoft: You need to fix your Skype and Microsoft account issues, this is insane(kolemcrae.com)

544 points by kolemcrae 9 years ago | 171 comments

It looks like [email] is used with more than one account. Which account do you want to use?

- Work or school account

- Personal account

I get this prompt every time I try to log into Azure with my work email. If I choose the work account (the most intuitive option) my azure subscription list is empty. I have to log out and select the other option.

Why is there a difference and why isn't this transparent? I am authenticated, you know who I am, give me access to the things I'm authorized for. I don't know what kind of weird backend situation MS has, but asking me to understand it is terrible UX.

jlian 9 years ago | |

Back in the days MS used to allow you to create a "Microsoft Account" (MSA) using any email, including an email that's already associated with Azure Active Directory (AAD work or school account).

This was a mistake and has been patched. But it looks like an MSA was created using the same email as your AAD before the fix.

Thus, from MS's perspective, there are two distinct accounts under the same email, hence the UX. It's really quite a mess, and yes the situation is weird. We're working on it make it better.

Try transferring the subscriptions to your work email using this method https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/billing/billing-subsc...

badthingfactory 9 years ago | | |

Thanks for the clarification. I'll give this a try... maybe on Monday. This seems like a Monday task.

basch 9 years ago | | |

that is just a microcosm of how bad the situation is. I dont think microsoft fully understands how impossible it is to have a conversation with a lay person using microsofts correct terms. "no not skype, what you want is skype for business (a completely different unrelated product), then you want to access a folder in your microsoft office 365 group team site document library (no not teams, thats different) through the onedrive client, unless in this case you want to use the sharepoint app, err no the onedrive app, err no the OUTLOOK GROUPS, no not the outlook app, the outlook groups app (not office groups??? why????) app because the sharepoint AND onedrive app dont have that feature. You can access your group team site onedrive files from sharepoint, or outlook groups, or onedrive, but if you use the teams app you can only see the files stored in channels, which are the same as folders in your onedrive/sharepointteamsitedocumentlibrary except they are also chat rooms in teams. If you want to scan something you need officelens or onedrive, but not sharepoint or outlook groups because they dont have a scan button nor teams, because that cant upload to groups/channels/subfoldersinteamsitedocumentlibraries, so you need onedrive which has a scan button. once you open onedrive (ios) you need to click sites to get to groups, because groups are in the sites tab, even though no other onedrive interface uses the sites nomenclature, nor is sites often used sans teams. then click the group name, then click documents (because thats the only option unless you make other document libraries. if you make non shared20%documents libraries, they are inaccessable from some clients such as OWA/attachgroupfiles. so dont ever ever make them, but you will still have to click documents ever time you click the group. every time. but if you want to make another document library to partition some large files into a different document library, to prevent accident giant syncs of data, you will need to click sync again. for every document library. on every persons computer.) If someone scans something to the root of the shared20%documents folder, its inaccessable from teams because it didnt make it to a channel. And if they made a different document library, its roulette whether or not varous clients can see it or if they just autoassume shared20%documents. Oh it looks like you did all this is in your microsoft account not your office account, now you have to start over and cant move your data automatically. Yes Im sorry that onedrive personal is different from onedrive corporate which is different from a (onedrive) office 365 groupteamsitedocumentlibrary.... ... here let me teach you the EASY WAY to do this. MEMORIZE tenent.sharepoint.com/sites/groupname/Shared%20Documents, and just type that right into the address bar, its much faster to MEMORIZE that string than it is to navigate the user interface. i promise you should memorize it to save time. no really im not kidding, i emplore you to memorize the url structure instead of learning the interface. fine, we can continue, lets walk through all the clicks one more time.

then onenote gets involved in the mix, which gets stored in onedrive. but the surface pen can only call the onedrive that accesses onedrive personal (msa) not onedrive individual corporate, because there are two onenotes, one built into windows one into office. the pen eraser can not be reprogrammed to use the PAID FOR CORPORATE onenote, just the free app. so never click the button on the only peripheral of the three thousand dollar computer you just bought, because it will lead you somewhere you dont want to go. so now onenotes are stored in the wrong onedrive. also for some reason your computer still has the onedrive for business client, formerly, sharepoint sync, formerly groove (acquired from ray ozzie who also tortured you introducing Lotus Notes to the world, back in the day) which is depricated, lets update you to onedrive, formerly live mesh, but now the correct client to use to access your aad onedrive for business. yes im sorry, one drive for business is no longer developed but you use onedrive not for business to access your onedrive for business which is different from your personal onedrive, and also different from groups. yes you could use the share feature to share documents in your individual (corporate not personal) onedrive with others, but the more correct way to sustainablty collaborate is by using gropu onedrives. and yes, you still have to click sync for each group/document library again on your second third and fourth computer, because sync settings cant be stored in the cloud or pushed to other users. if you want to mount your group/onedrive/sharepointteamsitedocumentlibrary as a drive letter without caching and syncing it we need to install a third party zeedrive service, because windows cant remount sharepoint drive letters on reboot well.

and microsoft wonders why people prefer dropbox/box....

tldr: teams vs teamsites (completely different). i can add people to groups or teamsites from outlook groups or teams, right? yes you can add people to teamsites from teams, but they are completely different things. msa onedrive vs aad onedrive vs group onedrive (not called a onedrive usually but accessable through the onedrive web/windows/mobile client using the onedrive api.) onenote vs onenote 2016. skype vs skype for business. channels vs folders, vs document libraries vs teamsites vs groups vs teams!>??!?! :( :( :(seriously why the fuck does my phone have onedrive, sharepoint, outlook groups, outlook, AND teams to get to files stored in and out of my office 365 groups, oh and lens can only scan to my aad onedrive, not a group. no messages cant pass between exchange, yammer, teams, and skype, except when they sometimes do poorly between teams and skype (for business of course, not skype.) why is outlook groups the only app with a follow button. from why when i follow an office 365 group team site document library (what should be called a group onedrive!!!) does it NOT show up in either onedrive nor sharepoint. why is the follow button different in teams, outlook groups, and the sharepoint web interface! yes there is a desktop teams app, but its really a copy of chrome without any chrome running web app locally on your computer, using at technology called electron which packages a client version of a javascript engine repackaged as a server repackaged as a client. i digress. but its sure not .net. and yes they use chrome, not edge. which isnt internet explorer. nor file explorer.

remember that time Bill Gates tried to download something off Microsoft's website. He should try using Office 365 for a week with a team of people. (http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-...)

manigandham 9 years ago | | |

This could be resolved by sending an email notice telling people exactly what's happening and giving them the option to collapse their personal/non-work Microsoft accounts into the current work/managed accounts.

If it's a company domain then there's not much reason to have personal account with the same work email address.

josefresco 9 years ago | |

Google does the same thing when a customer previously used their own "branded" email for Google services, and then switches to use G Suite (formally Google Apps).

Every login will prompt to select the organizational account, or the personal account.

Not sure why only MS is being called out for it ... they probably modeled their system after Google.

klodolph 9 years ago | | |

That's not what Google does. (Edit: It sounds like Google used to do this. I switched to G Suite very recently and did not end up with an account in this state.) If you have an existing joe@example.com Google account and then sign up for G Suite as the owner of example.com, what happens is the old joe@example.com account gets divorced from its email and given a new temporary name. You can then change it to a new @gmail.com but that change is permanent.

Unfortunately you cannot merge. Google services will have an option to switch between the different accounts. The priority order is shared, and to change the order you have to log out of all your accounts and log in again, with the primary account first. I decided to keep my @gmail.com account first, so I only have to switch to the @example.com account when I check GMail.

Could be much better, of course. I was personally a bit frustrated with the process.

badthingfactory 9 years ago | | |

If Google had the same terrible UX, I would rant about that as well, but I've never had a single problem with any of my Google accounts. I cringe every time I have to do any type of maintenance on one of my MS accounts because I know it's going to be terrible, and it always is.

zip1234 9 years ago | | |

They both use OAUTH2, which is a web standard.

gnud 9 years ago | |

As I understand it, the work account is actually tied to your company's office 365 subscription or something like that.

The private account is the one created by you.

If anyone knows the exact difference, please explain! Would be greatly appreciated.

alexvy86 9 years ago | | |

As you said. the Work/School Account is one provided by your employer (normally), and usually comes from Active Directory (or AzureAD).

The Personal accounts (also called Microsoft accounts/IDs or Live IDs) are the ones you as an individual create directly with Microsoft. The prime example would be people who've had a Hotmail account for ages, and that eventually became a Microsoft account.

The confusion comes because since a couple years ago, you can create Microsoft accounts with any e-mail that you own, be it personal, from work, hosted in gmail, hosted by your employer, hosted by yourself... You name it. So it is possible to create a Microsoft account with your work e-mail, even if your work e-mail also has a Work/School Account tied to it. All the notifications for that Microsoft account will go there, but they are not for your "Work/School Account" (also referred to as Organizational account), they are for your personal one.

Yes, it is a mess. After a while I got used to it and now I'm comfortable navigating all my identities, but it can be very annoying when you first encounter it.

jordache 9 years ago | | |

Yes, but as a consumer I don't care about that differentiation.. Just make it transparent.. merge my authorization rules or something...

Gawd.. You're microsoft, you can create a whole new security protocol. Don't have this half baked persona solution.

If you can't figure this out, it really reinforces the reason for every time we come across something in Azure where we're like wtf isn't this feature supported?

pionar 9 years ago | | |

Work or school is a federated option, using ADFS to do the authentication using your company's Active Directory info. If you choose that, when you enter your work email address, it'll redirect you to your company's ADFS login page. It's used a lot with Azure AD.

badthingfactory 9 years ago | | |

That's a nice theory, but we don't have office 365 and I didn't create the account haha.

balabaster 9 years ago | |

I just went through this exact thing last night when I had to remove an old Azure and Outlook 365 subscription that I stopped using months ago. It literally took me 4 hours to figure out how to get into all the correct accounts to remove the active directory users from Azure, remove all the user subscriptions for Outlook 365, remove my Azure subscriptions so I could stop being billed and then finally delete my domain from GoDaddy.

Coupled with the fact that I'd enabled 2FA made for a ridiculously poor user experience. By the end of the process I was so pissed off, I'm not sure if I'll ever use Azure or Office 365 again... we'll see.

mahart 9 years ago | |

It is just a result of poor planning, technically they are two separate accounts. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/...

They did add an option so you can change your personal account's email address so you don't have to deal with account namespace issues.

anotheryou 9 years ago | |

every freaking time...

The other day I wanted to check if a windows key I had is still valid for another fresh installation before wiping my HDD. I don't even remeber the whole endavour, but I had to install some specific MS software for it...

Amazon manages to keep multiple accounts of mine, with the same email, but different passwords.

shalmanese 9 years ago | | |

Amazon does this because, when it was founded, it was common for entire families to share the same email account so they built in support for multiple accounts mapped to the same email address. I knew someone who was in charge of maintaining it and it was a legacy nightmare mess.

tracker1 9 years ago | |

What's sometimes really bothersome to me, is when I had autologin in either chrome and/or my lastpass, and it would constantly push through the right or wrong password and/or account, because they're on different screens.

Though the more bothersome one in my mind, is that I can't login to gmail in chrome without attaching it to chrome... I don't want to attach my work email to my home chrome browser (which forces a couple extensions, and my home page). So I've opted to run both Chrome Canary (work) and Chrome release (home/personal)... It seems even worse UX when you have multiple google accounts you want to keep separate.

As to Skype, it's been weird since MS bought them, and I remember having great pain migrating/attaching to my MS account so I can have a single login, and it was just weird for some while.

Aside: I'm glad google domains includes DNS and email forwarders, so I can keep my really old domain emails forwarding to my gmail so I can on occasion recover old accounts.

brynjolf 9 years ago | |

We have office 365 but no personal account. I still get the question every single time... And it doesn't work well with password managers

badthingfactory 9 years ago | | |

Password managers tend to struggle when the login process is fragmented over 3 screens that include 65 redirects.

I use LastPass religiously, but I don't even try to make it work with MS accounts.

usernametbd 9 years ago | |

You'll need to go to your subscription settings in Azure Portal, and in the Access Control (IAM) options, you can add the other account as an authorized user of your Azure subscription. Once you do this, you can use your subscription from both accounts. It works kind of like Active Directory.

ArmandGrillet 9 years ago |

Microsoft truly sucks with account management. Here is what happened to me with Microsoft Office last week:

- My Office University account expires.

- My father invites me to be part of his Office 365 Family subscription (it includes 5 accounts).

- I click on the "Get the invite" button on the email I have received and... "You already have an active account".

There was no way from the website to cancel my expired University account, the only available option was to subscribe to my own Office 365 Personal account (€10/month).

I have contacted Microsoft and it took 90 minutes of chat, including a one hour session where a Microsoft support guy took control of my computer (it was totally useless, the error has been solved by a modification in the Microsoft account database), to fix the issue. As titled here: this is insane.

sashk 9 years ago | |

I had similiar problem. I called them, got to the real person, who fixed issue within 2 minutes. Total call time was about 5 minutes. That included time, I was searching for invite and so on.

reitanqild 9 years ago | | |

So basically you can be lucky - or not.

IIRC my boss wasted a few hours on the phone with two MS employees - spread over a week or two because their accounting and customer service teams couldn't speak together it seems.

I however was lucky, some tool I had bought was missing from my Windows Store account, after contacting them they contacted me back and I had it fixed within 20 minutes or something.

__jal 9 years ago |

Shit like this is why I don't use anything from them. There are probably 15 or so different accounts for me in their DBs, which I will never even attempt to use again. Life is too short to put up with managing other people's CRM for them.

Apple is actually getting close to this bad, too, and in some ways, worse.

I gave my mother my old iPhone over a year ago. It was wiped, and we set it up with the 'family' whatsit. For reasons I won't go in to, at some point, I ended up giving her my Apple ID password to fix a problem when I couldn't do it.

Ever since then, something has periodically decided to sync a random assortment of things. It isn't consistent, temporally or in terms of what it syncs. (I'm very anti-cloud-service; I don't use online backup, sync or cloud docs or any other sync services from Apple. I think my other uses the backup, but nothing else, because the phone is her only Apple device.)

A few months ago, her contacts ended up splattered all over mine. I deleted them, it happened again a few days later, this time just a random assortment of them.

Yesterday, my call logs ended up on her phone.

Short of asking her to wipe the phone again, I don't know how to make this crap stop, but I'm sick of it. Seriously considering going back to a feature phone; everyone making modern phones appear to (a) make it impossible to have a self-contained phone without your personal life smeared across multiple companies' servers, and (b) be too incompetent to actually smear my personal life across their servers without fucking it up.

teekert 9 years ago |

Try using Skype for business... Your chat history is gone when you switch to another app and is not even saved on a PC. It's always the question if a chat ends up on your laptop of mobile. You frequently miss chats or have a "you missed a chat" email, even though you were logged in. It is an insanely poor product. I guess it's not where their focus is. It could easily be a Slack alternative except that it is so bad.

jvagner 9 years ago |

Yes.. I have a similar tale of woe.

I'd like to change the username of my basic Skype account. Alas, it has the company name I worked for at the time. I also have some credits in that account. I'd either like my credits back, or I'd like to change my Skype username. Neither are possible.

I'd also like Microsoft to stop asking me if I'm using a business account, or a personal account, when I enter my work email address into every Microsoft service we use every day.

That'd be nifty, too.

zamalek 9 years ago |

By ways of some bad choices I wound up with 3 Microsoft accounts. I never knew which services were on each.

In addition to those 3 accounts, I had 2 Office accounts (one for work, one personal). Notwithstanding that the O365 sign in really can't handle two accounts on the same browser (by ways of automatic redirects) - I didn't know if services were on O365 or Live. MSDN and VSTS do not support O365 login, so I had to tell my Live account to claim my MSDN keys. It's nuts.

I eventually just forget about accounts. I stopped using O365 for personal email. Don't use O365 for anything personal, you will pay hell for it (for more reasons than merely sign in).

iamthepieman 9 years ago |

I love that I can't sign up for Azure services because i need a "real" phone number and no, VOIP numbers like google voice, Microsoft's own Skype or even my actually land line (which is through my ISP and apparently classified as VOIP) won't work.

I don't have a mobile phone so that's fine, I can get texts on Google Hangouts or Skype but their account software refuses to send the verification texts to those numbers.

Fortunately there's an option to have them call you but they refuse to send call my home phone system that is registered with my name and that is a valid e911 number associated with an e911 address. A call with a Microsoft support person confirmed that nope, I can not sign up for Azure.

Neliquat 9 years ago | |

How dare you try to be a customer without complying to their idea of technical social norms. Shame.

j_s 9 years ago | |

This may be enough (receive SMS without a phone) if you're desperate for Azure or other account:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13631724

iamthepieman 9 years ago | | |

that's the problem, every site I tried failed their "is this a real phone" check including their own service and the phone that nearly any normal person, technical or otherwise would consider a "land line"

jordache 9 years ago |

My Skype account was temporarily hacked at one point, to the extend that it got disabled it. I still have access to the email associated with my Skype account. I've talked to MS support on this already but for whatever reason, they can't validate my identity to the extend that I can reset the password on that skype ID. Their only solution was for me to create a new Skype account. What other cloud service does not allow reset of account via e-mail validation!?

What a cluster MSFT

EDIT: And guess what, I have not used Skype since. Trying to recreate my contacts and the whole process of having family accept my new account was a much larger barrier than just instructing my family to use another video chat service. FU MSFT.

mnm1 9 years ago |

Skype accounts are fucked. Try signing in on Skype for Linux with two different accounts. If you're lucky, you'll experience the contact shuffle where some contacts are moved from one account to another and others randomly deleted from both accounts. I mostly stopped using Skype after that one.

snailmailman 9 years ago | |

On my personal laptop, Skype forced me to update to the "new" skype version that's styled like the windows 10 one. I could no longer log into the old one. This new one is objectively worse.

+ chat history seems to work

+ dark mode

- no cross platform video calling (except to web)

- way less settings (like notification configuration stuff, all sorts of settings)

The only thing I really use skype for is skyping to family members. Now I can't do that, because cross platform video doesn't work. The old skype worked and had more features and settings! Why force me to switch when the new version isn't feature-complete!

_alexander 9 years ago |

Here is a fun one. If you use the wrong email address for a password reset, Skype will create a skype user name and account linked to your email address. You will not be able to delete the Skype account. Yeah, fuck you Microsoft.

ralphie02 9 years ago | |

that's a pretty shitty bug on their end. Now you've fucked two accounts, brilliant

viggity 9 years ago |

Microsoft's accounts are just managed horribly in general. I've got two microsoft accounts for work and one for personal. The personal one I separate out by having a different chrome profile. However, for work, I have to wrestle with the login screen for about 6 iterations everytime I want a new tab. I use one MS account for azure, another for office 365. Regardless of which one I enter/select, it always prompts me for the password for the other account. Drives me effing nuts. Plus that whol "is this a business account or a personal account" selection. jesus. so frustrating.

DrPhish 9 years ago | |

That drives me insane as well. I expect it is nessecary in some fashion, but the implementation is severely frustrating. It should be "sticky" and allow you to switch if required. Also the personal accounts can only have 16 character max passwords, so my normal wetware password generation algorithms don't work

hpshelton 9 years ago | | |

When was the last time you tried to change your password? Long password support has been live for a long time.

douche 9 years ago | |

You've basically got to commit to using different browsers for different accounts.

fiddlerwoaroof 9 years ago | | |

Or chrome profiles.

legohead 9 years ago |

Funny to see this thread after what's happening to me today.

I need to get access to my Microsoft Office online documents. I go to login and it has me do a security check with my email: microsoft@mydomain.com. It's supposed to send a code to verify my email, but I never get it. So I try option 2, a different email: microsoft@myotherdomain.com. Never get the code...

Hmm, does it not like the word microsoft? So I try myname@mydomain.com, and I get the code! Although now I have to answer a bunch of questions and my account is under review -- I should get an answer within 24 hours.

But what about the future? My real account is still microsoft@mydomain.com. Will this keep happening? :\

stretchwithme 9 years ago |

Don't get me started.

I once subscribed to Office and am pretty sure I had to supply my first and last name once if not multiple times. But the final confirmation email still started with "Dear null null".

arkitaip 9 years ago | |

Serves you right, little Bobby Tables.

philliphaydon 9 years ago |

As much as I dislike Google services. Their account stuff just works. For everything they create. It just works.

I love MS stuff, but they have the worst account process ever, closely followed by Apple.

I do wish MS would sort their act out in regards to accounts.

I lost my Xbox account trying to transfer my games and such between my windows live account and an old account. Lost my games and points and credits :(

jevogel 9 years ago | |

I once lost my Xbox Live account because I deleted the associated Hotmail address that I never used. I didn't realize it until the attached credit card expired years later. I went to update the card info on the website and couldn't get on due to the non-existent email address. Spent hours with customer service over multiple calls and no one was able to link the account to a different email address or add a new credit card for me. Just insane.

orbitingpluto 9 years ago | |

Not entirely true. I've seen issues with Google's G Suite / Google Apps for Work and Google+. Things like your co-workers avatar being displayed instead of your own.

franciscop 9 years ago |

I have been using Hotmail and Skype since the old days, but now my Skype (on Linux, mind you) is totally unusable and the Outlook online abomination is becoming WORSE every day. I just noticed today that they added a DOOOONG sound to the "webapp", but then when I open it nothing happened. It was a message in the "Others" recently added tab (not a folder, not spam, somewhere in the middle but physically in a totally different place). I love the "Done" action from Inbox (Google) as it's a perfect categorization.

So I'm migrating everything to Inbox (Gmail) and people don't care at all switching to Hangouts instead of Skype.

jackvalentine 9 years ago |

I got caught by another Skype issue - merged my long-time Skype account with my MS account.

Old skype account - kinda bad password.

MS account - great password, 2FA.

Then I got alerts that someone in China had logged in to my MS account. I couldn't figure out how they'd done this until...

I figured out they'd signed in to skype, using my old skype username and old skype password that were still valid for some unknown reason after merging it in to my far more secure MS account.

ap46 9 years ago | |

It wasn't manually hacked, there's someone out there running a program to brute force known Skype usernames & spreading spam & confirming more Skype usernames. Alphanumeric password upto 9digits are not safe absolutely.

jackvalentine 9 years ago | | |

Well of course

ianmcgowan 9 years ago |

Google used to be pretty bad at this too, but they seem to have their act together these days. It's not an easy problem. But yeah, when I go to use a Microsoft service online it's always a crapshoot, and certain products require either a personal account or a work account. Syncing OneNote is a confusing mess because of this. And don't get me started on Lync/Skype for Business...

orionblastar 9 years ago | |

It is not always easy to do a good quality control when they downsize their best people and hire people willing to work for less money but a lower quality.

Back in the 1990s I worked as a tech and programmer. I issued bug reports to Microsoft and they would fix them in the next service pack or version. But in doing so they'd change the Windows API calls which broke my Visual Basic programs. I had the Dan Appleman book on API calles but had to surf the net for the changes made to them on Microsoft blogs for developers or Yahoo Clubs on programming, etc. Everytime they made a book, it was outdated as soon as it was published.

stevenwoo 9 years ago | | |

Still have a couple of the Microsoft Developer Network t-shirts they mailed to you for reporting bugs in Visual C++/MSDN.

I can remember having an issue with a Windows API call in the 90's and having to go on usenet to find someone who knew where to download an example program that Microsoft inexplicably removed from subsequent MSDN CDs.

chrisper 9 years ago |

Yes, they need to fix a lot of things. Also if you use Onedrive online, you are automatically logged into Skype every time you use onedrive. You cannot log out. You can set yourself invisible, but you will be set back to online next time you log in again. It is ridiculous.

Another point is that you cannot use a "work account" you use in office365 as your personal account for OneDrive etc.

twakefield 9 years ago |

My skype account was hacked (who's wasn't?) a few months ago. I tried to access it to change the password but in the process I was forced to link it some other Microsoft account that I didn't even know I had. It took me half the day to recover my original passwords then reset them. Now to get to Skype (if I'm logged out) I have to log into some Microsoft cloud identity thing.

All for a service (skype) I rarely use.

wslh 9 years ago |

If I were Satya Nadella I would fire top Skype executives first, cannot believe how a rational company can destroy this brand. Full stop.

Zekio 9 years ago |

TL;DR: impossible to delete old skype accounts without knowing EVERYTHING about it.

I have like 3 old skype accounts which shows up with my name which I can't access due to me not having the email addresses anymore nor do I remember the passwords, so it is a pain when people try to add me on skype and I contacted them and asked if they could delete my old accounts since I can't access them and they said that is not possible since I don't remember all the security questions and answers, wouldn't even give me the questions so I could have a chance at answering them..

Edit: added TL;DR

gwicks56 9 years ago |

Managing accounts is a massive problem everywhere. I recently moved from Australia to the USA, and I have been having this problem ad-nauseam. Try switching your Google developer account to a US bank, or your amazon, paypal or god knows how many others. I accidentally put skype credits on the wrong skype account, and was hoping to be able to merge accounts somehow, but ending up just deciding it wasn't worth the $20.

beerbajay 9 years ago | |

I lived in the US, got a paypal account, all good. Moved to sweden, updated address + bank info, still ok. Moved back to USA, now: "You cannot change your country of residence. If you have moved open a new paypal account". WTF? This is a paypal account I've had since the early 2000's.

gwicks56 9 years ago | | |

Yeah I had to basically set up new Ebay and paypal accounts, which is a pain, because you go from having 100's on good reviews as a buyer and seller to having none. It's a hard problem, in some a ways a universal internet ID would make life so much easier, but it would also make tyranny much easier.

mevile 9 years ago |

Microsoft should fix this, but I have learned to never link my personal accounts with work accounts after the Dropbox enterprise debacle that led to users losing their personal files! after having their Dropbox linked to enterprise Dropbox and then leaving the company.

These situations where you mix personal and enterprise/job accounts become edge cases that can be catastrophic for users stuck in them after they leave companies.

inopinatus 9 years ago |

To some extent I think this is a user category error. Similarly, one of my platform's most frequent support requests is account recovery due to a change of employment. The number of people who use their work email for personal accounts, without thinking about the long-term consequences, is staggering.

Protip, don't name anything expecting you can change it later. See also: S3 buckets.

kolemcrae 9 years ago | |

Or, you know, let us unlink accounts or change the username, two pretty normal and reasonable things to request.

inopinatus 9 years ago | | |

There's nothing that makes either reasonable, other than "I demand it".

maxfurman 9 years ago |

This is bad, and I'm not letting Microsoft off the hook here. But, there's an easy workaround for this particular case: Use an alias, such as myrealemail+msft@example.com, for the new account.

raisedbyninjas 9 years ago | |

Just tested, My office 365 account bounces for this type of address.

tankenmate 9 years ago | | |

This is why I use Postfix and Cyrus for my personal mail. I get Postfix to pre-parse transform the '-' char to '+'; this way I can use email addresses that stupid systems don't barf at but can still get mail delivered to the right mailbox (including sub mailbox if it exists). e.g. me-junk@mydomain.tld goes directly to my junk mail box :)

okreallywtf 9 years ago |

Looking into active directory based features in Azure (key vault, etc) convinces me that somehow active directory is to blame for a lot of the confusing account issues around Azure. I get the feeling a lot of the microsoft authentication systems are built on top of active directory, which does not seem like the most straightforward auth system out there.

turc1656 9 years ago |

I am also having a Microsoft account issue that is similar to this.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oaccou...

Difference for me is that I have no idea how the work account was created. I do an have Office365 account from my employer but we just recently switched and I had this problem before that account was created. Also, that Office365 account is linked to my actual work email. The problem I am experiencing is a "work" account that was mysteriously created on my personal email and it makes no sense. Over a month and no one has responded.

Anyone here have any ideas?

bpicolo 9 years ago |

Google drive also has extremely frustrating multi-login issues. It frequently forces me to log out of all accounts in order to correctly access drive on a specific one. It's entirely random whether it works or not. It's just infuriating.

skinnymuch 9 years ago | |

This drives me crazy. My business partner insists on using Google Drive. So I go along with it. But not being allowed to access my Drive while being logged into other Google accounts is so annoying.

retromario 9 years ago | | |

I'm not saying it's a solution, but as a workaround for similar situations it can help to use two browsers, one for each account.

bsg75 9 years ago |

> Let me change my Skype username. What the hell, this is just obvious.

The number of services that don't allow this is also insane. Its as if they use the username itself as a key, rather than one that is masked from the user allowing such changes.

s_kilk 9 years ago |

I wonder how many different Auth systems Microsoft has created/subsumed/whatever over the years. It'd be cool too see a graphic of all those services and how they have merged, or in what way they are layered currently.

tatersolid 9 years ago |

My corp can't use Azure. We really want to, we're mostly a MSFT shop that runs a largish SaaS application. But Microsoft automatically linked the organizational Azure account for our corporate internet domain to the personal account of an ops guy because of some cookie being present when he created the organizational Azure account. After six months of support calls MSFT cannot get it unscrewed. We're spending 50k USD per month with another cloud provider, and want to move to Azure to take advantage of SQL Azure and MSDN credits. But their screwed up account management system is losing them this revenue.

josteink 9 years ago |

This thing singlehandedly made me ditch Skype.

I didn't know which my login were and it was random which contacts I would see and which contacts were able to message me at all.

I just gave up on it and never looked back.

gambiting 9 years ago |

Ever since Lync(corporate IM system) got merged into Skype so that now it's just "skype for business" it's atrocious, easily the worst application I have on my PC.

If someone goes offline, Skype will show you how long they have been offline for. Except....that it's just a random number. I can set my status to offline right now, and my coworker will see that I've been offline for.....168 days. Or 700 days. Or 35 minutes.

Microsoft knew about this bug for years, and there is no fix for it.

Frequently, when I send messages to my coworkers, they appear ABOVE older messages in the coversation, which is extremely confusing, because obviously the whole window will flash to indicate you got a new message, but in reality you have to scroll up to actually see it.

Highlighting text is just broken, I dare anyone from MS to reliably highlight just a portion of text without the selection jumping to seemingly random part of the window without any indication how or why.

Arbitrarily low character limit, so you can't paste snippets of code.

During conference calls, audio just dies from time to time, and the only thing you can do about it is kill the conversation and start again. This is a product based off Skype, for fucks sake, that MS is charging us millions of dollars for globally, and that doesn't even have the basic functionality working correctly.

douche 9 years ago | |

The Skype for Business client is still essentially the same as when it was Lync 2013. In the early days of the rebranding, the version number had only jumped a couple dozen revision numbers, keeping the same major and minor versions, and still calling itself Lync 2013 on the about dialog. Changes on the server-side have been even less drastic.

Consumer Skype is still an entirely separate code base. The two IM platforms don't even speak the same protocol, and just barely interoperate.

The naming change is illogical as all hell, but Microsoft bought Skype, and suddenly Lync needed to be rebranded under the Skype umbrella. Before it was Lync, it was Office Communicator, before that Live Communicator, and before that, I believe went under an MSN name. It's always been hitched to the latest marketing bandwagon.

Lync/S4B is, sadly, one of the better enterprise IM systems, in comparison to other big players in that space, like Sametime, Jabber or Hipchat. It's still hot garbage.

stagbeetle 9 years ago |

Wooh, am I glad I'm not the only one experiencing account problems.

An event I'm going to requires a Skype account of a preliminary interview. So I go to sign up with my gmail, and I'm able to create an account. However, I already had a Skype account through MS's weird Outlook program (I signed up with my gmail for Outlook, and it automatically created a Skype account without telling me . . . for the gmail account).

This bricks both accounts by loading to an error page when I login, telling me to go to MS's website to fix my account. I go there and then after spelunking through the maze of a UI, finally get to a page that tells me I need to call Microsoft to diagnosis the problem.

Screw that noise. It's 2017, this is archaic.

Luckily, there's a third option for signing up and that's through a phone number. I do that, but now I don't know what to enter for the username field in my interview app. I look through Skype's help docs, and it doesn't say anything about phone numbers.

I assumed my phone number is my username and that's how people can add me. Anyway, that's what I put in the app and I'm hoping that the UN acts like a UN and not a phone number with calling charges.

What a mess. It's also partly the event's fault for using Skype when better alternatives exist.

ap46 9 years ago |

Someone has been successfully running brute forced attempts at login into accounts & spreading/amassing valid usernames & attempting brute force logins on them like a pyramid. My password of alphanumeric password of 9 digits got cracked & Skype fucking sent spam to everyone & now is most likely attempting to brute force their accounts as well.....they can't even implement a rate limiter for the logins against an IP.

kayoone 9 years ago |

this is not even touching on the security issues that arise from the fact skype does not support 2FA and the merged legacy accounts remain vulnerable.

hpshelton 9 years ago | |

You can disable login from secondary emails, recovery emails, your phone number, etc. using https://account.live.com/SignInPreferences.

devereaux 9 years ago | |

What do you mean?

If you have a outlook.com email, a merged a legacy skype account, and 2FA, what is the attack method that can be used against you?

thewavelength 9 years ago | | |

As of my knowledge, you can log in to Skype without 2FA using an outlook.com-email-address even though it has 2FA enabled.

dvtv75 9 years ago |

I recently upgraded my Linux PC, and had to reinstall Skype.

So I sign in to the new Skype, and can't remember my password. That's OK, I'll just get them to reset it. Oh, my email address expired while my PC was sitting on the junk heap? That's OK, I'll follow their prompts, this shouldn't be too difficult.

"Unfortunately, we were unable to verify your ownership of this account using the information you provided. [...]

Please submit a new account verification form At this point, your best option is to submit a new form with as much accurate information as you can gather."

I've provided the details of six different users who were on my contact list, the complete email address I used to use, and there is nothing else I can do. No email address I can contact, no phone number to ring.

Oh, and most importantly, there's no "Import old account settings" option.

Screw you, Microsoft.

swamplander 9 years ago |

Similar hate post coming from me soon. I have an MSA & Office 365 (Azure AD) login using the same email. I use my MSA to login to my Surface, but now, all the sudden, I can't setup Outlook to connect to my O365 email. Their solution: rename your MSA. My response "no freaking way... no telling how much stuff that's going to break as I've used that MSA for over a decade".

And then I read your post today... I'm glad I closed my Surface and went back to my MacBook last night...

Ref: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook/Can-t-connect...

VSerge 9 years ago |

Skype also has a knack for randomly asking you to input a security code that it'll text or call you with, except... When I have recently needed to do it, I got 0 call or text. The email Skype offers to send a code to, in my case, isn't the email associated with the account but some old email that no longer exists (old recovery email I think). So I'm effectively locked out of my account on any new device for the time being, and getting zero feedback when reaching out to customer support. It is a maddeningly bad user experience, and I cannot believe a company like microsoft would let such crippling bugs exist on such widely distributed products.

caconym_ 9 years ago |

I have two or maybe one Microsoft account(s). It's impossible to tell because I seem to have made two accounts that some parts of their systems think are the same, and other parts think are different. My theory is that I was a victim of some sort of migration bug at some point because I have had at least one account for a very long time (probably since Halo 2 for that online multiplayer). This problem makes it impossible to update relevant details on either account, IIRC.

Their support is the worst; they were totally unable to even comprehend the problem I was seeing, let alone fix it. I just gave up trying to use them.

shinamee 9 years ago |

I should have raised this issue long time ago but why should I do so, after all its not like they're paying me to fix their shits.

I basically moved from Skype to Zoom.us with all my clients

tostitos1979 9 years ago |

Had to deal with Windows/Skype/Office login issues for a senior. It is insane that people who pirate have an easier time than paying customers.

i336_ 9 years ago | |

Not necessarily looking to go in the direction you mention, but I'm curious what you mean nonetheless - AFAIK, Skype's consumer/personal offering is free, and then you need to subscribe for business accounts because that all runs on microsoft servers.

Are you referring to a different product, or are there copies of old enterprise skype server systems floating around out there?

tostitos1979 9 years ago | | |

This person had Skype credits and some calling plan. Very consumer level :)

ska 9 years ago |

The whole MS account management is a hot mess.

I'm currently dealing with an issue with different versions of the same (MS) software getting authenticated via a domain but ending up pointing at two different MS accounts associated with the same email address, and hence consuming two licenses. 2 weeks of "support" back and forth hasn't helped, they seem to have good tooling to introspect what is happening.

bflesch 9 years ago |

I was hit by this issue a couple of days ago and suddenly I needed to use my old Skype login but the password of my second microsoft account.

jakebasile 9 years ago |

Allowing username changes should be basic functionality in any system that has usernames. People change, names change, and so on.

jackvalentine 9 years ago | |

And if you want to avoid abuse rate limit it to one change every 3 months, or $10 per change or SOMETHING.

Sami_Lehtinen 9 years ago |

Outlook doesn't validate email addresses correctly. Their validation is a complete failure. Even # isn't allowed in addresses. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.4

kazinator 9 years ago |

Skype no longer works on my wife's Windows 7 laptop. The latest update was pushed without being accompanied by the new MSVC DLL's that it needs, and so doesn't start. I haven't been able to install the redistributable run-time separately, and so it is in a foobared state.

kolemcrae 9 years ago | |

Oh man, mine too! I have to use the web app!

richev 9 years ago |

The real fun starts if you need to change the email address associated with your Microsoft account.

Six months and multiple support calls later and I'm still receiving Azure billing information and Xbox newsletters at the old address.

mschuster91 9 years ago |

Android still does not support logging in with accounts created by signing in with Facebook, despite dozens of support threads and complaints... in case anyone at MS reads this, it sucks.

Neliquat 9 years ago | |

Why on earth would you want to sign on using facebook? Not saying this isnt a bug, but what is the use case sceneraio?

mschuster91 9 years ago | | |

Single sign-on. It's really nice to NOT have to copy-paste usernames and passwords from password managers into native apps but use a simple "sign in with FB/Twitter" and it's done. 1 second with a decent internet connection vs 60+s for switching to Keepass, entering the wallet password, actually finding the password, copying the username, switching back to $app, pasting the username, switching back to Keepass, hope it didn't for some reason decide to randomly lock, copy the password, switch back to $app, hope it didn't forget the username in the meantime...

edit: it becomes a special annoyance when an app decides to lock you out after n days (n usually = 30). Great from a security POV but hell is that annoying if it happens to multiple apps at once on a day. Or when you have 20+ apps with unique logins when you reset your phone... as login credentials/tokens are (rightfully) not cloud synced. Android desperately needs a password-autocomplete API, secured by e.g. the fingerprint sensor found on new-ish Samsung devices.

StreamBright 9 years ago |

I was running into the exact same issue. I am hoping that some product can challenge Skype and replace it entirely. It would be better at this stage.

jondiggsit 9 years ago |

I switched my (small) business back to running on Microsoft products like Office 365 and the account issues with my employees are driving me INSANE.

justin66 9 years ago |

Merging a work account to a personal account just seems like a stupid thing to do to begin with. No good could have come of this.

kolemcrae 9 years ago | |

I don't remember merging them. It must have happened years and years ago. I haven't worked for that company in a VERY long time.

oregontechninja 9 years ago |

I stopped using Skype forever ago, the service just turned to crap. Facebook video calls are easier at this point.

lavalampkid 9 years ago |

I hope someone out there @ Skype or Microsoft sees this and puts it in front of the right people...

BadassFractal 9 years ago |

I try to avoid using Skype if I can, it feels unloved, like it's barely hanging together.

merb 9 years ago |

* and Office 365 Business Accounts vs Microsoft Accounts and make all of it linkable.

ikeboy 9 years ago |

Any good way to search all my Skype chats? Or download complete history to a file?

trevyn 9 years ago |

Or just stop using Microsoft products? It's been pretty clear to me since about 1985 that other companies make equivalent products that tend to be more powerful and more pleasant to use. Your time and mental state are valuable!

orionblastar 9 years ago | |

That is why people stuck to Wordperfect and Lotus Smartsuite bundles instead of Microsoft Office. Until new versions of Windows broke the third party office apps.

GRR Martin still uses Wordstar in a DOS machine because he doesn't trust Windows to not crash or reboot on him and lose his data.

Problem is the Microsoft tax on Intel or AMD PCs that OEMs have to pay even if they don't install Windows or Office. But now Office 2016 is installed but user needs to buy a key to use it for activation.

I suggest that people use Libreoffice because it can read docx files etc.

dboreham 9 years ago |

Mine:

Corporate account, used for Windows logon

Skype personal account

XBox account because they made me make one when my kids were young

A second personal account used for something I forget. Posting on MS help fora possibly.

Mind you I have three active Google accounts.

MS_Buys_Upvotes 9 years ago |

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5jg8y6/fyi_crimin...

Reddit discusses hackers using weak Skype credentials to access other MS accounts and bypass 2FA

Markoff 9 years ago | |

thanks for this, i couldn't figure out months ago how could be my Microsoft account compromised despite using 2FA, seem after this hack and resetting all of my security settings they removed ability to sign in with old Skype account since when i went to check it now it was already unchecked

though i still see in recent activity unsuccessful attempts for IMAP synchronization from all over world, not sure if they are trying to use some old app password, which i reset after discovering have

douche 9 years ago |

I've got at least three different Microsoft accounts with the same email address. Supposedly there's a way to link them, so that this becomes less of a clusterfuck, but I've never been able to make that work. So it's just this big mishmash of resources associated more or less at random between these different accounts.

It's russian roulette every time I try to login to something that's authenticated with Microsoft accounts, and trying to remember which login I need to use to access which resources is more than I can keep track of, across outlook, MSDN, forums, Azure, Active Directory, etc, etc.

Kenji 9 years ago |

Trust me, the Xbox accounts aren't much better. It is painful. I generally avoid Microsoft accounts like the plague.

red023 9 years ago |

People: You need to quit your usage of M$ products and services, this is insane.

digitalmaster 9 years ago |

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.