Microsoft Account Recover is flawed and frustrating

Question

Microsoft Account Recover is flawed and frustrating

Shaun Williams 0

My wife uses her iphone to access email, for some reason her phones wants her password that should be cached , it never has before, the email account is on our family subscription and I put my email (account holder of family subscription) in. My wife's recovery email has not been used for over 10 years and we don't have access. Why can't I just reset the password on our family subscription? We have entered all the cached email info from her phone Outlook on the Microsoft Form twice. It says "Unfortunately, we have determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership." So we haven't a clue why the information we provided would fail. There is a load of important email my wife requires over the next week and this is a nightmare. How can you fix it?

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Answer 1

Hi @Shaun Williams

I’m sorry you and your wife are dealing with this, especially when she urgently needs access to important emails.

Although her account is included in your Microsoft 365 Family subscription, it remains a separate personal Microsoft account. The family organizer can manage subscription sharing, but cannot reset another adult member’s password or change their security information.

Since the old recovery email is no longer accessible, please first use the Microsoft account Sign-in Helper: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2214157

If it directs your wife back to the recovery form, she should complete it from a device, browser, location, and network that she has previously used with the account. Please include as much accurate information as possible, such as old passwords, exact email subject lines, and email addresses of contacts she has recently corresponded with. Your email address may be used as the working contact address for Microsoft’s response, but the account being recovered must be your wife’s account. Help with the Microsoft account recovery form

If Outlook on the iPhone still displays any messages, please avoid removing the account, signing out, reinstalling Outlook, or resetting the phone for now, as this may remove locally available access. You can also use the visible messages to check exact subject lines and contact addresses for the recovery form.

Please note that this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators, contributors including external Microsoft employees cannot directly intervene in Microsoft product features or access back-end systems. Our role is limited to providing technical guidance on reported issues, requests, or ideas only.

If two-step verification was enabled and none of the registered verification methods or recovery codes are available, Microsoft states that the account cannot be manually recovered.

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