Can't Add Microsoft Account

[davebeller]

Brand new, out of the box laptop. Trying to add an existing 365 account and I get a message saying, 'Looks like this isn't a Microsoft account.' Any ideas? Machine is brand new and fully updated.  

[WAWood]

@davebeller 

What do you mean by "365 account"? Do you mean Office 365 -- which some folks now call Microsoft 365?

[davebeller]

Are there other types of 365 accounts? I thought in regard to Microsoft, there's only one. 

[WAWood]

@davebeller 

Not that I know of, just that folks usually say Office 365 and I wanted to be sure.

By existing account, I presume it's an account you already have and did NOT come with the PC, right?

Sorry, but in that case, you'll have to hit up Microsoft because we can't do anything for you on MS stuff not working.

[davebeller]

Correct, it's an existing 365 account. Three, to be exact. I'm setting my three children up as users on the device using school 365 accounts. 

Well, that's kinda the problem. There's nothing pointing to MS 'stuff not working' vs the HP not working, you know? The 365 account in question is alive and working well on all other devices (and has for years). Suddenly, this brand new HP is not recognizing it as a Microsoft account. From the point of view of this end-user, it's the device. I can't see how a 365 account can connect and work successfully on multiple other devices and not this brand new HP and that it's not an HP problem. Although, in the end, I guess it's all a Microsoft problem. This is why I prefer Apple. 

As for this HP, I actually found a workaround. Instead of adding accounts as a Family Member and logging into their Microsoft account at the top end of user set up, I set up accounts as 'Other Users' with no Microsoft login. Once in, I opened Outlook and was able to connect their 365 accounts successfully. I then confirmed Word, Excel, Teams, OneDrive, etc., were all connected and it seems to be working well. I did the same for other two kids and it seems to be working. It's just weird that when looking at users, it has 'Sign in to Microsoft account?' prompt. Silly PCs. 

Thank you so much for replying! Have a great day!

[WAWood]

@davebeller 

In think you hit upon the core of the issue. 

MS used to provide the option to create additional accounts -- and when those got created, they had full access.  Now, they only provide the option to create Family accounts, and when those get created, they have reduced privileges.

They don't make this apparent in the account creation, and I only found out about this because I had to create a second account on a new laptop and discovered the new account lacked access rights.  It's possible to grant them, but you have to jump though all kinds of hoops to make that happen.

If you were to query MS about this, you would get some response about how they've done this to make us SAFE!