If you are logged into a system running the Microsoft Windows operating system
and wish to run an application, e.g., Microsoft Outlook, under another account
other than the one you are currently logged in under without switching to that
other account, you can run the application as the other user using the
runas command from a command prompt. If you don't know where the
application is located on the system, you can find its location from a
command
prompt by changing the directory to the root directory of the drive where
applications are stored, which is typically drive C:, then use the
/s option of the dir command to search all
subdirectories for the program, e.g., outlook.exe, which is the executable
file for Microsoft Outlook.
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office>cd \
C:\>dir /s outlook.exe
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 9420-A68C
Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14
03/16/2021 12:41 AM 15,794,840 OUTLOOK.EXE
1 File(s) 15,794,840 bytes
Directory of C:\Windows\Installer\$PatchCache$\Managed\00004109D30000000000000000F01FEC\14.0.4763
03/23/2010 12:57 PM 15,889,248 OUTLOOK.EXE
1 File(s) 15,889,248 bytes
Total Files Listed:
2 File(s) 31,684,088 bytes
0 Dir(s) 3,328,741,376 bytes free
C:\>In the example above, the program is located in the
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14 directory, so
I can start the application as the user jdoe in the
Windows domain
Mordor with the command below (enclose the directory path and application
name in double quotes if there are spaces in the directory path):
C:\>runas /user:mordor\jdoe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\Outlook.exe" Enter the password for mordor\jdoe: Attempting to start C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\Outlook.exe as user "mordor\jdoe" ... C:\>
If the account under which I wanted to run Outlook is not in a Windows
domain, but is, instead, an account on the same computer, I could omit the
domain specification and just use /user:jdoe. You can also
use the format user@domain, e.g., jdoe@mordor.lan,
instead of the format domainname\username. To run a program as
another user, you will need to know the password for the other account.
In this case, the graphical user interface (GUI) for Outlook will open with
the email, calendar entries, tasks, and contacts for the domain jdoe account
once the password for that account is provided.
