Microsoft Teams is a hub for teamwork, it amazingly integrates everything a team needs to be productive. Chats, calling, meetings, threaded conversations, video conferencing, content collaboration, and the ability to create and integrate apps and workflows – all designed to aid worker productivity in a unified suite of tools.
But there is one issue with Microsoft Teams – i.e., some professionals find that with time they end up on multiple Teams Account. You could have one account that you have been using with your own team, along with another one with your clients, and one more with your partners. Now, if you work for multiple organizations, or you simply want to have multiple accounts added to Teams, what should you do?
As of now, Microsoft Teams does not support multi-account sign in and if you need to use Microsoft Teams with multiple accounts, in all probabilities you would end up in a non-productive situation. This is because you cannot check or swap through multiple accounts, you will have to sign out and sign back into your accounts. But don’t worry. Until Microsoft adds support for multiple accounts to Microsoft Teams for desktop, here are a few workarounds that let you use multiple accounts on Teams.
Login to Microsoft Teams with multiple accounts
Let us now explore a few ways to handle multiple accounts on Microsoft Teams:
- Use Web App on different browsers
- Create Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
- Use the mobile app
Let us look at these methods in more detail.
1] Use Web App on different browsers
We already mentioned that it is not possible to add multiple accounts directly to the Microsoft team desktop app, but you can log in to different accounts using multiple browsers like Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Firefox, etc.
To get started you would need to sign in with your other Teams accounts on the Microsoft Teams web app. To do this, head to teams.microsoft.com. On signing in, you would see the message prompting you to download the Teams desktop application. You should ignore this and choose to use the Web application only.
Now, you will see your default Teams channel on the web application just like you would see it on the desktop version. This web app looks and behaves just like the regular desktop app, so you would feel no difference. So, you can now simply login in using Chrome into one account and Edge or Opera for the other account.
Please note– Ensure that the desktop notifications are turned on.
Read: How to open multiple instances of Microsoft Teams.
2] Create Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a very lightweight way of distributing applications. These can go in an app store and can be installed like a native app, or they can be something a user pins from their web browsers and use it as a bookmark.
Depending on the browser you are working on, the steps for creating a progressive web app would be different. Now owing to the fact that these works best on Microsoft Edge, we will first show you how you can create one here. Follow these steps:
1] On your Microsoft Teams Web App, sign in with your Teams account.
2] Click the ‘. . .’ button appearing in the top right corner of the screen.
3] Now, click where it says ‘Apps’.
4] Click on ‘Install this site as an app’. This will now pop-out Teams into a separate window, letting you open another instance of Teams and another channel.
5] Now, right-click on the newly active progressive web app in your Taskbar, and select the option to ‘Pin to Taskbar’.
Done, Teams is now pinned to your Taskbar. Now every time you want to open the progressive web app or a separate instance of Teams, click on the shortcut on your taskbar.
On Google Chrome you can follow these steps to create PWA:
1] Click the three downwards facing dots appearing on the top-right corner of the screen.
2] From the options select ‘More Tools’
3] Now click on the ‘Create Shortcut’ option
4[ Make sure that the ‘Open as window’ option checkbox is clicked here.
Now again, right-click on the active progressive web app in the Taskbar, and then select the ‘Pin to taskbar’ option. You will now see the PWA on your taskbar and it would work just like the standard Teams app.
3] Use the mobile app
Using Microsoft Teams on your Android device using the mobile app could also help here. The mobile app allows you to add more than one account, and also makes switching between different accounts easy. On the mobile app, you can have conversations on multiple instances without having to constantly log in and log off.
We understand that working on mobile is not always a productive option. So, you can simultaneously use the Windows desktop app while using the mobile app.
Final Words
We hope with these workarounds you would be able to add multiple accounts in Microsoft Teams. If you have any suggestions or comments, please let us know in the comments section below.
