In Outlook, it’s no longer possible to sign out of your account or be prompted for a password to sign in. Therefore, if you share your computer with others, you might want to prevent them from accessing your email account while they use your computer.
To protect your privacy, have others sign into your computer with their own account. This will give them their own personalized experience and prevent them from accessing your Outlook email. To create a user account for each person who will use your computer, see “Create a user account” for Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, or Windows 10.
Tip: For infrequent users, consider creating a local "guest" user account for all your guest users to share.
Log off from Windows
If you’re logged into your computer and want to let someone else use it, or if you’re leaving your computer unattended for a while, sign out of Windows.
-
Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete.
-
Click Log off.
-
If you get a notification about unsaved changes in programs you have open, select whether or not to save them.
-
The computer will close the programs and log you off. This might take a few minutes.
After you have logged off, other users can log on to the computer with their user accounts. If they’ve set up Outlook for their account on your computer, they can access their email account but not yours.
Important: Outlook.com, Outlook Web App, and Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016 for Windows are not all the same. Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016 for Windows are programs on your local computer that you can use to access any type of email account, whereas with Outlook.com and Outlook Web App, you access them through your Internet browser. You can log off your email account in the browser, but when you use Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016 for Windows, the application information is stored on your Windows user account on your computer, so it is accessible to others when they use your account when using your computer. This is why you might want to create a guest account on your computer for others to use. This way, others cannot access your Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016 for Windows information when they use the guest account on your computer.
