Problems with private account and work account

Hi Tom,

What you are experiencing is a very common side effect of having both a personal Microsoft account and a work or school account authenticated on the same Windows device. Even though you consciously “sign out” of the work account inside Word or Outlook, parts of that work identity remain trusted at the Windows and Office application level unless they are fully removed. As a result, Office continues to treat your device as authorized for work resources, which explains why work documents remain visible, why the default save location points to your work OneDrive, and why you are repeatedly prompted to sign in.

The root cause is that your work account is still registered in Windows under “Access work or school” or cached in the Office identity store. Office apps do not rely only on the currently selected account in Word; they also rely on background tokens issued when the work account was first added. That is why Word can still access work OneDrive even when you believe you are signed in only with your personal account. It also explains the repeated sign-in prompt that fails: Office is trying to refresh an old or partially removed work token, but you are entering personal account credentials, which do not match the expected work identity, so it reports that the account “doesn’t exist.”

To resolve this properly, you need to fully separate the two identities on your device. First, open Windows Settings, go to Accounts, then Access work or school, and check whether your work account is still listed. If it is, select it and choose Disconnect. This step is critical, because simply signing out inside Word does not remove the device-level trust. After disconnecting, restart the computer.

Next, open any Office app such as Word, go to File, then Account, and explicitly sign out of all listed accounts. Once signed out, close all Office apps. To ensure there are no lingering credentials, open the Windows Credential Manager, look under Windows Credentials and Generic Credentials, and remove any entries that reference MicrosoftOffice, ADAL, OneDrive, or your work email address. Then restart again.

After this cleanup, sign back into Word using only your personal Microsoft account. At that point, Word should no longer see your work OneDrive, the default save location should switch to your personal OneDrive or local storage, and the recurring sign-in prompt should stop.

Going forward, the cleanest long-term approach is to avoid mixing personal and work identities in the same Windows user profile. If you regularly need access to work documents, consider either using a separate Windows user account for work, or accessing work email and files via a browser in an InPrivate window. This prevents token crossover and avoids exactly the kind of confusion you are encountering now.

If, after fully removing the work account from “Access work or school” and clearing credentials, Word still insists on connecting to your work OneDrive, that would indicate a tenant policy cached on the device, in which case reinstalling Office after removing all accounts usually resolves it completely.