Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Adding an Account

To create a new account, open the Charms bar; hit Settings; hit “Change PC settings”; select Accounts (Figure 24-1, top). This is your account information—the account Windows created when you installed it.

Note

The desktop Control Panel also offers a link called “Add a new user in PC settings”—but it just takes you right back here, into the TileWorld panel.

Select “Other accounts.” If you see some accounts listed here, then one of these situations probably applies:

• You created them when you installed Windows 8.1, as described in Appendix A.

• You bought a new computer with Windows 8.1 preinstalled and created several accounts when asked to do so the first time you turned on the machine.

• You upgraded from an earlier version of Windows, and Windows 8.1 gracefully imported all your existing accounts.

To add another one, proceed thusly.

Note

If this is the first account—if you’re using a new PC for the very first time—the setup process is longer than what you’ll read here. You’ll also be asked to choose a color scheme, opt to send automatic crash data back to Microsoft, and so on. Appendix A walks you through this one-time process.

• 1. Select “Add an account.”

  This button doesn’t even appear unless you have an Administrator account.

  Now you see the screen shown in Figure 24-2. Here’s where Microsoft is trying to sell you on the virtues of having a Microsoft account.

• 2. To create a new Microsoft account, type the lucky person’s email address into the box.

  You don’t have to. If you’d ...