Email account recovery tool not working

Question

I am posting on behalf of my partner.

A shady zip file was opened on one of our computers (kids, dont ask) and every single account used on there has been compromised. Computer now secured. Accounts mostly secured. Gmail/Steam/etc all made this fairly straight forward. So easy to prove ID and lock things down with MFA/2FA for everyone, except microsoft.

All that remains are the microsoft accounts. These are proving to be incredibly frustrating to secure.

Two emails in particular: my partners emails. Because she didnt update her phone number on them when she changed it a year ago. (one of which is used on xbox)

So we followed the 'secure your account' links in both emails, and changed the phone number (because this was as far as we could get) which locks you out of any settings for a MONTH, and STILL doesn't let you log into the emails.

So here's the situation:

Cannot change the passwords - so whoever hacked/harvested details presumably STILL has access.
Cannot recover the accounts, the stupid online tool refuses to allow recovery despite us providing bank info, xbox console info, email subject info, old passwords, etc.

The online recovery tool is not working. The only option we currently have is wait 24 more days and hope the hackers have just left the account alone. OR. I cancel the phone number reset and remain locked out anyway.

My partner has hospital appointments sent to these emails, and any attempt at contacting support to speak to someone redirects back to this broken tool. I don't need lectures on keeping things secure etc etc. I've covered that enough myself. I need a viable help option. We need those appointment details more than anything.

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Moved from Microsoft 365 and Office | Subscription, account, billing | For home | Other

Answer 1

Hi FG,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum. 

I’m truly sorry you and your partner are going through this. Being locked out after a compromise is stressful enough, but having hospital appointment emails tied to that inbox makes the situation even more urgent and overwhelming. It’s completely understandable that you don’t want more security lectures right now—you just need a realistic path forward.

That said, 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.

In your situation, the most direct recovery option Microsoft provides is the Microsoft Account Recovery (ACSR) form: https://account.live.com/acsr.

If the form is declined, Microsoft allows you to submit again (up to twice per day), and recommends including as much accurate historical account information as possible each time to improve verification chances.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further updates, thanks.

Thank you for your understanding. 

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