Account Recovery

Beth P 20 Reputation points
2026-10-21T04:16:38.77+00:00

How do I go about speaking to a HUMAN regarding an account recovery??

I've been trying to recover an account that I haven't used in YEARS but have since forgotten the password, any contacts associated with the account & also any emails I would have sent from the address. This is literally all i'd need to fill out the form to recover the account and I have none of those details. This is why I need to speak to a human but I keep having AI's thrown in my face.

Call the numbers listed - AI. Try fill out a help request form - AI. Try sending emails - No Reply Service. Apply for account recovery - AI.

For context - I had this email address in school but since graduating, I needed an email address that was more "professional". Over time I had forgotten about it but realised it was still connected to a lot of my life & I cannot change the email address on those accounts because I've forgotten the password to provide the verification codes to sign in to most of them.

No matter how many times I've tried applying to recover my account I always get rejected.

TIA for any help.

Outlook | Outlook for mobile | Outlook for iOS | For home
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Answer accepted by question author
Jonathan Deives 83,490 Reputation points Independent Advisor
2026-10-21T05:01:49.95+00:00

Please note this is a public user-to-user forum, so we can't recover accounts or bypass security from here.

Recovery for personal Microsoft accounts is an automated process. Support agents can't manually verify ownership, send reset links or change account details.

Under Microsoft's account activity policy, an account not signed in to for two years is considered inactive and may be closed. If it was closed, it can't be reopened and the recovery form won't work. Since you mention it has been years, this is the first thing to consider.

If the account still exists, the only supported path is the account recovery form: https://account.live.com/acsr.

To improve your chances:

-Submit it from a device, browser and location you previously used with that account.

-Use a working contact email that is different from the account you're recovering.

-Answer as many fields as you can, even approximately, and avoid duplicate submissions.

-Note the form can't be used if two-step verification was turned on and you have no access to those methods.

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