Two accounts with same username

Question

I have a Hotmail account that includes live.com and Outlook. The outlook.com account has the same username but totally different backup email and different backup phone number which makes it impossible to access it.

Can there be a Hotmail and Live account username that is different from Outlook account username?

Answer 1

Hi Greg, yes, this can happen. Microsoft accounts are identified by the full email address, not only the username before @.

So ******@hotmail.com, ******@live.com, and ******@outlook.com can be different accounts if they were created separately. If the recovery email and phone number are different, it usually means they are separate Microsoft accounts, not aliases of the same account.

You can check aliases on the account you can access here: https://account.live.com/names/manage