Setting up multiple profiles in Microsoft Edge.

How are multiple profiles helpful?

These days it’s very common to have two or more accounts. Whether it be a student, personal or business account, switching between them to access your different settings or saved bookmarks is now easier than ever! With the new Edge Legacy browser, you have the ability to add multiple Microsoft Accounts and non-Microsoft accounts. You have the option to sync your past set of personal data and saved data, e.g. passwords or browsing data. Microsoft accounts can even sync the data between devices.

Syncing your profiles

If you don’t already have the Edge browser you can download it here. Once you launch Edge, a window automatically opens, prompting you to sign into your main account. After signing in, you can open a drop-down menu providing access to manage your profile settings.

To add additional accounts as profiles, click “Add profile”.

A new window opens guiding you through signing in and syncing your data. You can, of course, also click “confirm” and adjust your sync settings later.

How multiple profiles work

Each profile opens in a new browser window and gets its own desktop icon. You can pin each desktop icon independently to your Windows taskbar by right clicking on the Microsoft Edge icon.

If you'd like to roam your data across devices, you must be signed in to the Microsoft account associated with the profile, sync must be enabled in the profile, and you must have Edge installed on all devices. Since browsing data is stored per profile, each profile can be setup to sync independent of the other.

Managing your profiles

Selecting a default profile

To ensure that links you open from another app open in the profile of your choice, you can now select a default profile in Microsoft Edge. To select a default profile to open external links, do the following:

1. Navigate to edge://settings

2. Select the “Multiple profile preferences” option (Note: This will only show if you have multiple profiles.)

3. Use the drop-down menu to select which profile you’d like external links to open with.

Automatic profile switching

*Although Microsoft indicates in literature that this functionality exists, we didn’t see it work as described during testing.

Microsoft 365 sites are authenticated using a secure log in. If you try to use a site that is linked to an account you have saved as a profile in Edge while within, for example a personal account; Edge will detect this and you will be prompted to switch to your work or School profile to access that site without having to authenticate to it. When you choose the work profile you want to switch to, the website will simply open in your work profile.