Remove Work or School account option when signing into Microsoft Account (Confirmed working!)

UPDATE #2: It works! it took about a week, though after deleting the account and domain from Office 365, I’m no longer prompted to choose between a Microsoft account and a Work or School Account

UPDATE #1: You can also rename the email alias on your Microsoft Account if you can’t remove your work or school account for any reason. Here’s how: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/11545/microsoft-account-rename-your-personal-account

I was testing the user experience of signing up for a Power BI trial without having an existing Office 365 subscription. For this, I used my personal Microsoft Account ([email protected])

The trial sign up worked fine, though Power BI is not a service that gets attached to a Microsoft Account, instead, it creates a new Organizational AKA Work or School AKA Azure AD account using your email address.

Now, each time you sign into your personal Microsoft Account, you’ll be prompted to choose whether you want to use your Microsoft Account, or your Work or School account.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a quick and easy way to remove this account once it’s created. And even once the account is removed, the login screens will continue to ask you to choose between accounts for about a week.

I’m guessing there’s a flag that gets added to your email once a Personal or ‘Work or School’ account is added to your email, and it’s this flag that’s checked each time you sign in with the address.

In order to remove this flag (that may or may not be a thing), you’ll need to completely remove the Work or School account.

To completely remove this account, you’ll need to do the following:

1. Take over as the administrator for your domain according to Microsoft
2. Create a new Admin user under the Admin section and sign in as the new admin
3. Delete the old user that shares your email address
4. Delete the Domain from Office 365

Take over as the administrator of your domain according to Microsoft

1. Sign into the work or school account at portal.office.com using the password you chose when signing up to Power BI
2. Click the App launcher on the top left or right and choose Admin
3. Click Yes, I want to be the admin
4. You’ll be asked to verify your domain using a TXT record. The steps to do this will depend on the platform your using to manage your DNS records. Microsoft have a bunch of instructions for various platforms here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-DNS-records-for-Office-365-when-you-manage-your-DNS-records-b0f3fdca-8a80-4e8e-9ef3-61e8a2a9ab23. Keep in mind that the only record you need to add is the Verification TXT record specified below – don’t add or remove any other DNS records from your domain.
5. Once you’ve added the TXT record, click Okay, I’ve added the record and wait for it to verify.
6. You should now be the admin for your domain name. Though don’t worry too much about the implications of this. It’s only temporary – we need to be the admin to disassociate the domain from Office 365/Power BI.

Create a new Admin user under the Admin section and sign in as the new admin

7. Click OK and wait for the Admin Center to load, then click Users
8. You should see a single user with your email address. We now want to create a new Admin account, though don’t use your domain name in the user name, select the Domain dropdown and use the domainname.onmicrosoft.com address. This is important when it comes to deleting the domain from Office 365 – it must not be associated with any existing users.
9. Under Roles, choose Global administrator. You may need to specify an alternate email address, choose one on a different domain name to your current account.
10. Sign out of the current user.

Delete the old user that shares your email address

11. Sign into portal.office.com as your new [email protected] user
12. Open Users
13. Select the user that shares your email address and click Delete User

Delete the Domain from Office 365

14. Once the user has been deleted, go to Settings, then Domains
15. Select your domain and click Remove
16. Confirm the removal and wait for the domain to be removed

At this point, you pretty much have to cut and run. You no longer have your email or domain name associated with the tenant. The only thing you can’t remove is the domainname.onmicrosoft.com domain. If you ever decide to sign up for Office 365 using this exact tenant name – even though it includes the trailing top level domain – you can just sign in as your new admin user.

An extra step to try to speed things up

You might have noticed when deleting your user, that it will be available to restore for 30 days.

If you want to permanently remove it, you can connect to Office 365 via Powershell

Prerequisites to connect to Office 365 via Powershell

1. Install the Microsoft Online Services Sign in Assistant for IT Professionals BETA: https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=39267
2. Install the Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Powershell (get the GA version): http://connect.microsoft.com/site1164/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=59185

Permanently remove Azure AD/Office 365 users via PowerShell

Connect to Microsoft Online Services via Powershell. You do this by opening PowerShell on your computer, entering the following Powershell command followed by the credentials of your admin user

Connect-MsolService

Enter the following command to get a list of deleted users.

Get-MsolUser -ReturnDeletedUsers

This should display your recently deleted user. Now, run this to delete your user.

Get-MsolUser -ReturnDeletedUsers | Remove-Msoluser -RemoveFromRecycleBin -Force

So will I still be prompted for a Work or School account?

The change on my account did not take effect immediately. It took about a week before I was no longer prompted to choose between a Microsoft Account, or a Work or School account. Though the good news is, it will eventually recognise that the Work or School account no longer exists.