How to delete the Microsoft account that Windows made you set up

For some time now, Microsoft has also required users to log in to their computer with an online account in the home editions of Windows 10 and 11. Although it’s relatively easy to avoid this requirement, many users are likely to have selected the online option when installing the operating system in order to quickly set up their PC.

However, you can also delete the online shortcut at a later date and instead switch your computer to a local user account. The following instructions show the steps with Windows 11, however they’re practically the same with Windows 10.

This is how it works: Open the “Settings” app and click on “Accounts” and further down on the right-hand side on “More users” -> “Add account”. In the next step, Microsoft will again ask you to set up an online account, but you can prevent this by clicking on “I don’t have this person’s sign-in information” -> “Add a user without a Microsoft account”. Then enter a user name and optionally a password.

Because Windows initially sets up the new account without extended rights, you must now convert it into an administrator account. To do this, click on the small arrow on the far right behind the local account you have just created in the “Other users” window that is still open, click on “Change account type”, switch from “Standard user” to “Administrator” and confirm with “OK”.

Important: Before you delete the existing Microsoft account, you should back up all the data belonging to this old account – otherwise it will all be deleted! This applies in particular to the libraries stored locally on the hard drive: i.e. the “Pictures”, “Documents” and “Downloads”, “Music” and “Videos” as well as the “Desktop” that appear as separate folders in Windows Explorer.

To copy the contents from the Microsoft account to the local account, open the subfolder of the online account user in Windows Explorer on the system partition or hard drive (c:) under “Users”, the name is often abbreviated here. Copy the entire contents of the first folder, such as the images, into the corresponding directory of the local account. Proceed in the same way with the other folders.

Once you’ve transferred all the important files, you can delete the Microsoft account. To do this, log out of the Windows Start menu by clicking on the account followed by “Log out” and log back in using the new local user account you created previously.

Open the Windows settings again and click on “Accounts” and on the right under “Account settings” on “Other users”. In Windows 10, the option is called “Family and other users”. Here too, click on the arrow to the right of the account and then click on “Remove” next to “Account and data”.

Important: Only confirm the security prompt with “Delete account and data” after you have backed up everything important from the previous Microsoft account as described. It will take a moment for the process to complete.

Note: Please do not be alarmed if one or the other installed programs is initially “missing” from the desktop. The software is not gone; you can quickly restore it with a shortcut to the respective Echse executable file in the “Programs” or “Programs (x86)” directories.

Tip: The online account requirement can be bypassed during the installation of Windows 10 and 11. To do this, either use the command oobe\bypassnro in the command prompt or use the Rufus tool to modify an installation stick so that the operating system is installed and set up automatically. Both methods are fairly easy to implement.