Windows 7 We were happy before "Microsoft Account" came up.

[BudVitoff]

Running under Win 7, we have six Outlook accounts. Ordinarily, all our email work was done locally under Outlook; however, occasionally we had to go out to live.com to get into accounts at the server. No problem -- sign in with our email address and password and we were fine.

Then somebody thought that we needed a master account (somewhat like Google's) and we got the Microsoft Account, but it wouldn't let us use live.com (reserved domain, or something like that) so we used a gmail.com account that we already had set up there. Easy enough, but now when we go out to live.com, we first have to log in with the Master Account email address and password. This takes us to that gmail.com account. If we sign out, we're back to the Master Account login page. We can't get to any of our live.com accounts under any circumstances.

Any ideas about what we're probably doing wrong?

 

[ussnorway]

HuH? Most browsers will not let you log into two different email accounts at the same time... they auto log you out of the old one as part of logging into a new account.
You can override this by using a private window or different browser.

 

[BudVitoff]

With all due respect, I think we're dealing with a misunderstanding here. I'm not trying to log into two different email accounts at the same time. I only mentioned the six accounts as a matter of interest, and with that many accounts, it's only likely that I'll have an occasional need to visit one of them at the server level. The problem is that, before the Microsoft Account thing was born, I could go to live.com and sign in as any of those six to find what I needed to know, without any complication. I hope this clarifies the problem described in my original post. If it doesn't, please let me know, because the post won't do me any good if it's not understandable.

 

[Neemobeer]

I believe if you login with the master account, go to the inbox, then click on the gear by your name > options > "Your Email Accounts". Click on Details and then remove. This should remove the live.com account from the Microsoft account. Then you should be able to log into it separately.

 

[BudVitoff]

Everything was fine until I clicked on Options, then there's no sign of "Your Email Accounts" anywhere. The left pane is headed Shortcuts, with sub-headings General,Mail,Calendar, and People, and Mail had sub-sub-headings of Automatic Processing, Accounts, Attachment Options,Junk email, and Layout. Not a sign of "Your Email Accounts" anywhere, or the Word "Details" either.

 

[Neemobeer]

After logging into live.com

Click Gear > Options

Click Your email accounts

Details on the extra accounts > Remove

 

[ussnorway]

screenshots really do help a lot.

 

[BudVitoff]

Unfortunately, after I click the gear > options, I get this:

 

[ussnorway]

You don't have outlook mail... your software is the new "outlook mail preview" version and Microsoft will be trying to push it over the new year.

The offical word from Microsoft is No
ref = New ways to get more done in Outlook.com - Office Blogs

I have only seen it once here in Australia and the client was not amused to learn it can not be undone... once you upgrade a microsoft account to this system you are locked in... even if you make a new microsoft account it will stay.

 

[BudVitoff]

Well, at least the mystery is solved -- thank you. Since we don't use any of the features "at the server", but just depend on getting our email in and out of our local Outlook, I suppose there's no reason for panicking. I just don't like it when I don't know what's going on right under my nose.

I keep getting popups that want someone to sign in with an email password. I've got six Outlook accounts -- two for my daughter and four more for her kids. The kids have little to no activity, and I believe that this is MS's way of showing concern about the lack of activity on the affected accounts. The trouble is, just filling in the popup doesn't help, but signing in at the server seems to satisfy MS for a while. This thread is about just that -- the difficulty of signing in at the server, so it seems I have a dilemma on my hands.

It looks like I'll have to study the article you gave me. Thanks for your help.

 

[BudVitoff]

Well, this problem was solved easily with help from Microsoft, although it left me a bit embarrassed. It turns out that live.com is no longer a standard whatchamacaallit for Microsoft. They only use Hotmail.com or Outlook.com. When I went out to Outlook.com, with a little wiggling I got to my live.com accounts just fine.