PulseSwitching to a Microsoft account
Moving from a Google account to a Microsoft account, and carrying your notes over.
This article is for people who use the Outlook calendar but have been signing in to Pulse with a Google account as a stopgap. Switching to signing in with a Microsoft account connects the calendar directly and makes pulling in events more reliable. Here are the steps for switching, and how to carry your past notes over to the new account.
This article covers only the switch. The only calendars that can be connected are those on cloud Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online). Where you run an on-premises Exchange Server, switching will not let the calendar be retrieved, so check first. Signing in generally is covered in Signing in and connecting your calendar, and the case where administrator approval is required in Signing in with a Microsoft account. These steps are carried out in the desktop app (macOS and Windows).
Before you start
The steps differ depending on whether the email address you use now and the email address of the Microsoft account you are moving to are the same.
| Situation | What you need to do | What happens to your notes |
|---|---|---|
| The Google account and the Microsoft account have the same email address (your employer moved from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, say) | Just sign out and sign in again with Microsoft | They stay as they are. No import needed |
| The email addresses differ (you were using a personal Gmail address and your employer is on Microsoft 365, say) | Sign out, sign in with Microsoft, then import your notes | Moved by the import. It is a move, not a copy |
Where the email address is the same, the account itself does not change, so notes, folders, templates and recipes are all kept exactly as they are.
The steps
Sign out of your current account
Click your workspace name at the bottom left and open Settings. Scroll the sidebar to the bottom and click Sign out. Signing out does not delete the account or your notes. Signing in again with the original account returns everything to how it was.
Sign in with a Microsoft account
On the sign-in screen click Sign in with Microsoft and follow the Microsoft authentication screens. When asked to allow calendar access, read what it says and allow it. Where it says administrator approval is required, your tenant administrator has to approve it. How to ask for approval, and what the administrator does, are covered in Signing in with a Microsoft account.
Carry your past notes over
Where you signed in with the same email address as before, you go straight into your existing account and this step is not needed. Where you signed in with a different address, a new empty account is created, so go to Settings > Profile and use Import notes from another account, entering your previous email address. Entering the six-digit verification code sent to that inbox starts the import. The import moves the notes; none are left in the previous account. The code's expiry, and what to do if the import item is not shown, are covered in Moving notes from another account.
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- Outlook events appear on the home screen
- The Microsoft account's email address is shown at the bottom left
- If you ran an import, your earlier notes are in the list
Where you end up
- Outlook events now sync directly through the Microsoft account. The workaround of connecting through a Google account is no longer needed.
- Imported notes appear in the new account, in the workspace that was open when you ran the import.
- How folders, templates and paid subscriptions are handled is the same as for the import generally. What comes across and what does not is covered in Moving notes from another account.
- The paid subscription stays with the old account. To use paid features on the new account, take out a new subscription from Settings > Billing. Once the old account's subscription is no longer needed, cancel it there. For the steps, see About cancellation.
You can also keep the old Gmail account and use it for personal events. The arrow icon beside the email address at the bottom left lets you add and switch accounts.
Where your employer is moving everyone from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, switching Pulse after the internal email migration is complete makes the verification code less likely to trip you up. The import requires access to the old address's inbox, so do it before the old account is shut down.
If something is not working
Q. An administrator approval screen appears and I cannot go further
A. Your organisation's tenant requires administrator consent before permissions are granted to a new app. Ask your IT department for approval. An example request, and the steps for the administrator, are in Signing in with a Microsoft account.
Q. My notes have not come across
A. Check you got as far as entering the six-digit verification code. Where the code was not entered, or an expired one was entered, the import does not run. If the code does not arrive, check your spam folder and any quarantine folder on your mail service. If it is still not there, you can request a resend after 10 minutes.
Q. The import item is not in the settings screen
A. This feature can be disabled by the settings of the workspace you are moving from. Ask an administrator of that workspace to enable the two settings under Settings > Workspace > General > Data export permissions. The order they need to be set in, and how they depend on each other, are covered in Moving notes from another account.
Q. The email address is the same but it was treated as a new account
A. Check you are not signing in with a Microsoft 365 alias or an address on an old domain. Differences of upper and lower case are normally ignored, but an address on a different domain is treated as a different account. In that case, carry the notes over using the import.
Q. I forgot to cancel the old account's subscription
A. Sign in again with the old account and cancel from Settings > Billing. If you cannot get into the account, write to tharada@the-unchain.com from the email address concerned. How long you can carry on using it after cancelling is covered in About cancellation.