Microsoft Account and shared folders

If you are using a Microsoft Account on your computer, it’s worth keeping in mind that traditional shared folders won’t work. By traditional shared folders I mean from other computers in the same workgroup as yours, but without a Microsoft Account.

I had two machines – a Windows 8 client, and Windows Server 2008 R2 server. Client had an account with username “rakhesh” which I later converted to a Microsoft Account. Since the username still appears in many places as “<MACHINENAME>>\rakhesh” I figured I should be able to access my shared folders on the client, from the server, by logging in as “<MACHINENAME>\rakhesh”. But no, that does not work. Finally I had to create a new local account on the client and use that for shared folders.

The reverse too applies. At home I have two Windows 8 clients. They are not in a HomeGroup, just a regular workgroup. Both have the same user account but one of them is converted to a Microsoft Account. The shared folders are on the machine with a local account and whenever I try accessing these from the machine with a Microsoft Account it fails. I worked around that by mapping the folders to a drive and specifying the local account credentials then. I believe one can also use the Credential Manager for this but I haven’t tried it yet.