Recover a Microsoft Account You've Lost Access To (the Recovery Form)

You can’t sign in and the normal reset won’t help — the recovery email and phone on the account are gone, or someone changed them after taking over your account.

Why: when you can’t receive a code at any method on file, Microsoft has no automatic way to confirm you own the account. The recovery form is the manual path: you answer questions only the real owner would know, and a person reviews them.

Fix 1: Try the automatic reset first (skip if it already failed)

If any recovery email or phone still reaches you, you don’t need the form:

1. Go to account.live.com/password/reset, enter your username, and request a code by email or text.
2. Enter the code and set a new password.

Only move to Fix 2 if no code can reach you at any listed method.

Fix 2: Fill out the account recovery form

1. Go to the account recovery form (also reachable as aka.ms/recover).
2. Enter the email/username of the account you’ve lost, plus a different working email Microsoft can reply to. That contact email can be brand new (make a free Outlook.com address) or even a trusted friend’s — it just has to be one you can open.
3. Answer as many questions as thoroughly as you can. The big ones:
   • Old passwords you’ve used on the account (check saved passwords in Edge/Chrome/Safari if you’re unsure).
   • For Outlook/Hotmail: names and addresses of people you email, and exact subject lines of recent messages.
   • For Skype: your Skype ID, contact names, and recent purchases.
   • For Xbox: the console serial/ID you use most.
   • Approximate account creation date and any billing info tied to subscriptions.
4. Guessing is okay — wrong answers don’t count against you, so answer everything rather than leaving blanks.
5. Submit. Microsoft reviews and emails you a result, usually within 24 hours.

Do it from a device and network you’ve used to sign in to that account before — familiar location and hardware raise your match score.

Fix 3: If recovery fails, try again (and harden next time)

• You can submit the form up to twice a day. A second attempt with more detail (more old passwords, more exact subject lines) often succeeds where the first didn’t.
• If you turned on two-step verification and have no working second method, Microsoft genuinely can’t verify you — there’s no override. That’s why the form keeps failing for some hijacked accounts.
• Once you’re back in: change the password, remove any unfamiliar recovery email/phone the attacker added, review recent activity, and add a second verification method plus a saved recovery code.

FAQ

How long does Microsoft take? It reviews the form and replies to your contact email, typically within 24 hours.

Can a support agent just reset it for me? No — agents can’t send reset links or change account details. The form is the only review path, by design, so an attacker can’t social-engineer their way in.

My account was hacked and the email/phone were changed. The recovery form is exactly the tool for this — you prove ownership with history (old passwords, contacts, purchases) instead of the recovery methods the attacker swapped out.

What if I don’t remember any old passwords? Provide everything else you can; the form weighs many signals. Check your browsers’ saved passwords first — people often have old ones stored.

Sources: Microsoft Support — Help with the Microsoft account recovery form · Microsoft Support — Reset a forgotten Microsoft account password