If you have multiple Office 365 accounts (e.g. one with CWSL and one with some other school, organization, or even a personal Office 365 account), you may experience a problem logging into one of these accounts or you may have difficulty switching between them.  


Here is what's happening: when you sign in to an Office 365 web portal the web browser caches your login credentials. This cached login persists across all tabs and windows of that browser, whether it's Chrome, IE, Edge, or Safari. This is a useful feature when opening multiple web apps within Office 365, but this works against you when you have two or more separate Office 365 accounts and you are trying to log into them simultaneously or switch between them.  


For example, if you log into the CWSL Office 365 portal, then you try to log into Office 365 with an account from a different organization or a personal Office 365 account, you'll find that the browser will log you into your CWSL Office 365 account. This is expected behavior and does not indicate that something is broken or misconfigured. 


So how do you log into multiple Office 365 identities simultaneously?  There are two ways to manage this:

  1. Use the "incognito" mode of your web browser
  2. Use a different web browser (e.g. use Chrome for one Office 365 identity and use Edge for the other Office 365 identity).


This article discusses the first method listed above. The second method really requires no detailed explanation, but you do need to be aware that if you use a password manager of some kind, and it operates with both browsers, you could still experience an issue with identity caching. 



How to Use the Incognito Browser Mode

Opening a browser window in "incognito" mode, also called "private" mode, varies from browser to browser.  What this does is prevent the incognito window from passing on the credentials cached from the original browser windows.


Other browsers:

See https://www.howtogeek.com/269265/how-to-enable-private-browsing-on-any-web-browser/