Can two users with the same email address be associated with two different Azure AD directories?

Question

I would like to understand how Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) handles users with the same email address across different tenants. Specifically, can two separate users with the same email (e.g., user@example.com) exist in two different Azure AD directories as distinct accounts?

For example:

Tenant A: A user user@example.com is created as a native member in Azure AD.

Tenant B: Another user with the same email (user@example.com) is created as a separate account in a different Azure AD directory.

Answer 1

Hello Praveen , Welcome to MS Q&A

Yes, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) allows two separate users with the same email address to exist as distinct accounts in different Azure AD tenants. Each Azure AD tenant is a separate and isolated instance of the directory service, so the same email address can be used in multiple tenants without conflict.

In your example:

• In Tenant A, user@example.com can be created as a native member.
• In Tenant B, another user@example.com can be created as a separate account.

These accounts are independent of each other, and their existence in separate tenants does not affect each other. Each tenant manages its own set of users, and the same email address can be associated with different user identities in different tenants.

For more detailed information, you can refer to the Microsoft documentation on known issues for provisioning in Microsoft Entra ID.

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Thanks

Deepanshu