Resolve my Microsoft 365 Family Subscription being associated with the wrong email address

Question

Resolve my Microsoft 365 Family Subscription being associated with the wrong email address

Anne Smyth 0

I have had this Family subscription for years without issues, but now want to install Office on my new PC. After finding great difficulty with this I discovered that the associated email address has been wrong all along, and I cannot access it (I don't know what verification method I chose). The yearly subscription is not up until next June, so I am reluctant to take out a new Family subscription, as it looks as if refunds are by no means certain. Please can anyone help?

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2 answers

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Answer 1

Hi @Anne Smyth

You shouldn't need to buy a second subscription. Your Family plan belongs to the Microsoft account it was bought on, so the goal is to get back into that account once. After that you can fix things for good.

Go to the Microsoft sign-in page, enter that old email address, and choose Forgot password. If it asks for a code you can't receive, pick the option that says you don't have any of those, which takes you to the account recovery form.
Fill in the form from a PC you've used that account on before, if you can. Give a working email you can check now as the contact address. Add as much as you remember: old passwords, exact subject lines of emails you sent, and contacts you emailed from it. Guesses are fine.
Microsoft replies to your contact email, usually within 24 hours. If it doesn't go through, you can try again (up to twice a day), adding more detail each time.
Once you're in, go to account.microsoft.com and update the security info so codes go somewhere you can access.
Then either add your correct email as an alias on that account, or open Sharing under your subscription and invite your correct email address as a family member. Either way, you can install Office on the new PC with the account you actually use.

Please don't share your account email or any personal details in this public thread.

Do you still remember the password for the old account, or is that lost too?

If this resolved your issue, please consider accepting it as the answer. If the recovery form gets rejected, let me know and I'll be happy to keep helping.

Reference:

Anne Smyth 0 Reputation points

2026-10-13T16:22:40.53+00:00

I'm getting into the Microsoft sign-in page with no difficulty. It is showing the email name I would prefer to use, and won't let me change it to the one I know the subscription is allocated to. I don't see any way to change it, and when I try adding the registered one, I'm told it already exists. Am I going to have to open another email account and add it?

Answer 2

If you are unable to access the account that the Microsoft 365 subscription is registered to, then you will not be able to cancel the subscription yourself, you will need to contact Microsoft Support directly to ask them to cancel the subscription.

Before you do cancel the subscription, to avoid data loss, if you use OneDrive to sync your files online, you will loose access to that OneDrive storage, you first need to ensure you have disabled 'Files on Demand' in OneDrive settings and wait for your files to be synced back to your PC to ensure you have a local copy of all your files.

Then, try using this method to contact their support to ask them to cancel the subscription.

Go to this link: https://support.microsoft.com/contactus

Select Microsoft 365

Click 'Get Home Support'.

In the box provided, type billing.

Press Enter, then on the next page, scroll down and click 'Sign in to Contact Support'.

Navigate to Microsoft 365 and Office - Manage my Subscription.

Select the 'Chat with support agent in web browser' option