Microsoft Teams personal and work/school can now run side-by-side

By Sean Endicott
published

You don't have to toggle between the personal and work/school versions of Teams anymore on the desktop.

Microsoft Teams PC
Microsoft Teams PC (Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Microsoft Teams now supports having a personal and work/school account open at the same time.
  • The feature has been rolling out gradually since February 2021.
  • Teams does not support having two work/school accounts open at the same time.

People using Microsoft Teams on their PC can now have a personal and work/school account open at the same time. Previously, you'd have to toggle between accounts. The functionality makes it much easier to communicate through the personal and work/school versions of Teams at the same time.

I spotted the new functionality after an update to Teams on both of my PCs. The capability has been rolling out gradually since February, according to the Microsoft 365 roadmap (opens in new tab).

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The icons of the two instances of Microsoft Teams are slightly different to make them easy to differentiate. The personal version of Teams has its logo within a white circle, while the work/school version just shows the app's logo.

Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)

At this time, there isn't an option to run multiple instances of work/school accounts at the same time.

Microsoft appears to be pushing the personal version of Teams a bit harder these days. A "Chat" app powered by the personal version of Teams will ship with Windows 11.

Microsoft Teams App Icon
Microsoft Teams


Microsoft Teams has versions for personal use and work/school. Now, you don't have to toggle between them on the desktop. Instead, you can run them side-by-side.

Sean Endicott
Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).

9 Comments
  • Can't come soon enough. I have had to create seperate logins. Ultimately it worked out better with only an annoying caveat. I have to constantly sign in to use office with my personal account to activate it in my work, college or dev user account .... T_T. That never used to happen before and the frequency has increased with the 21h1 update.
  • Very few people use team personal, so no point in having teams unless you use it for business.
  • And if you use it for business, you'll have the need to run multiple accounts (like your company account and the client account) which it doesn't support. Waste of time...
  • I hope that they roll out support for two business accounts at once. I see why the first option was a personal one and a work/school one, but two work/school ones would be more useful for me.
  • The company I work for uses it, but only for managers, there was talk about us using it, for some reason, not sure what we would use it for, but that seemed to have vanished when the pandemic started.
    not that I would use it, they keep trying to get me to use Yammer, I won't use that either.
  • Have been able to do this since May.
  • I would like to integrate my work calendar into my personal Teams so the family can see it.
  • Using it since May though my family is on WhatsApp for now.
  • This is a good move and hopefully they will add support for multiple work accounts in the future. Be patient people!