Audience: Faculty, staff, and other affiliates who created a personal Claude account (Free, Pro, or Max) using their CNetID@uchicago.edu address before the Claude Enterprise rollout.
Summary: Your personal Claude account was not locked, claimed, or deleted by the University. The UChicago Claude Enterprise rollout added a second account on the same email address and changed what the claude.ai login page looks like — it did not remove your ability to sign in to the personal account. The University does not require SSO, so the "Continue with email" option still reaches your personal account exactly as before. This article shows how to get back in, how to work with both accounts side by side, and what the real limitations are (no merge, no email change).
Symptom
- You had a personal Claude account (Free, Pro, or Max) registered with your CNetID@uchicago.edu address.
- After the Enterprise rollout, signing in at claude.ai lands you in the UChicago workspace, and your personal chats and projects are nowhere to be seen.
- You conclude the University locked or absorbed your personal account.
Cause
Two accounts now exist on the same email address: your original personal account and your new UChicago Enterprise account. The confusion comes from the login flow, not from any access restriction:
- The login page changed. Because uchicago.edu is a verified domain, entering your address surfaces a prominent "Continue with SSO" button. Selecting it signs you in to the Enterprise workspace. Your personal account was never behind SSO, so this path will never show your personal content.
- Sessions auto-load the last account used. Browsers, the desktop app, and mobile apps resume whichever account was active last. After a first Enterprise login, that is the Enterprise account.
- Nothing on the personal account changed. The University does not require SSO for Claude. Anthropic's documented behavior for this configuration is that domain users can still access their existing accounts using the "Continue with email" option and can toggle between the Enterprise plan account and their previous accounts by clicking the profile icon.
The University has no administrative access to the contents of your personal account and has taken no action against it.
Resolution
1. Sign in to the personal account with Continue with email.
- Go to https://claude.ai and sign out if an account is already loaded by selecting your name or initials in the lower-left corner, then Log out.
- Return to the Claude login page at https://claude.ai.
- Enter your CNetID@uchicago.edu address.
- Choose Continue with email — not Continue with SSO — and authenticate the way you originally set the account up (emailed login code, or Google sign-in if that is how you registered).
- Your personal chats and projects appear.
If the wrong account still loads: click the profile icon in the lower-left corner and check the account list — both accounts appear there when both have active sessions, and you can switch directly. If the list misbehaves, clear cookies and cache for claude.ai and repeat the steps above.
2. Run both accounts side by side.
The account switcher works, but for daily use the cleaner setup is separation: maintain your personal account in one browser (or browser profile), Enterprise in another; or Enterprise in the desktop app and personal on the web. Visit the Switching Accounts section of our Move your existing AI account content into UChicago Claude Enterprise article for the options.
3. Keep University work in the Enterprise account.
Work in a personal account is not covered by the University's contract with Anthropic — including its data protection and training-exclusion terms. The Enterprise account also carries higher usage limits than a personal Pro plan at no cost to you. Rebuild active work-related projects in the Enterprise workspace; our Move your existing AI account content into UChicago Claude Enterprise article covers what to move and how to carry over Claude's memory of your preferences.
4. Decide what to do with a paid personal subscription.
Your Enterprise seat is free and never bills a personal card. A recurring Anthropic charge is your own Pro or Max subscription, which continues until you cancel it — it is not a University or Enterprise charge. If you no longer need it: sign in per step 1, then Settings > Billing > Cancel, at least 24 hours before the next billing date. App Store subscriptions must be cancelled through your Apple ID settings.
5. Optional
Export your personal data. To download for a permanent archive, select Settings > Privacy > Export data, then download the ZIP from the emailed link promptly (it expires after roughly 24 hours). The export contains conversation text only — no attachments, no formatting — and cannot be imported into any Claude account.
6. Claude Code, VS Code, and other IDEs
Claude Code and the IDE extensions do not have their own login screen. Running /login opens your browser to authorize the session, so whichever account is active in your browser is the account the tool will connect to. Fix the browser session using step 1 above first, then return to the tool and run /logout followed by /login.
One important difference from the web: the authorization page reached from Claude Code may not offer the Continue with email choice at all. To connect Claude Code to your personal account, make that account the active session at claude.ai in the same browser first, and only then run /login.
Match the error you see:
- "Invalid OAuth Request" or "Missing state parameter" after signing in successfully. You are in the HIPAA environment, which does not permit Claude Code. This is not a broken login — the feature is not available there. Request a change to the standard Enterprise environment (see the article on Full vs. HIPAA versions). Note that you can use only one environment at a time.
- "User is not assigned to this application." The sign-in is being routed to the UChicago Enterprise tenant using an account that has no Enterprise entitlement. If you are trying to reach a personal paid account, use the browser-session method above rather than the SSO path. If you believe you should have Enterprise access, your entitlement has not been applied — contact the service desk.
- It worked yesterday and now fails in VS Code. Check which Claude Code build the editor is actually using. VS Code may have picked up a different Claude Code version than the UChicago-provided one; switching to the UChicago version has resolved this.
- Persistent API errors, or a login that appears to succeed and then behaves as a different account. An older AWS/Bedrock API key provisioned before the Enterprise rollout can still be present on the machine, and the two credentials conflict. Clear the leftover ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and related AWS environment variables, fully quit Claude Desktop and every terminal window, then start again. Contact the service desk if you are unsure which variables are set.
Everything else in this article — the two accounts, no merge, no email change — applies to Claude Code exactly as it does to the web.
Known limitations
- No merge. Anthropic cannot merge a personal account into UChicago's Enterprise instance, and the automated migration Anthropic offers some Enterprise customers is not currently available for the University's configuration. Content moves by manual rebuild only. See our Move your existing AI account content into UChicago Claude Enterprise article for the options.
- No email change. Anthropic does not support changing the email address on an existing account. See Anthropic's article in their Help Center regarding changing email addresses on personal accounts. The personal account stays on your uchicago.edu address.
- Do not delete the personal account. Deleting an account on your CNetID@uchicago.edu address blocks you from claiming your UChicago Claude Enterprise account for 30 days.
Related Information
- Anthropic Help Center: Important considerations before enabling SSO — https://support.claude.com/en/articles/10276682
- Anthropic Help Center: Change the email address on an account — https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8452276