My mother can't access her Hotmail account anymore and retrieval attempts failed, please help

Question

My 84 year old mother is using the same Hotmail account for around 20 years and yesterday, she suddenly got locked out of her account. She didn't see any option to sign in with her password again. Instead, she could only sign in with a code that would be sent to her phone number. However, this phone number doesn't exist anymore and she never updated it. She then tried to retrieve her account by filling in a form, but she didn't remember some of the answers she had to give, like what her first pet name was and whether she had to fill in her maiden name or not. She had given my email address as a contact address and I got an email from Microsoft, saying that she didn't provide sufficient information for her account to be restored. I then tried to help her by filling in a more elaborate form that I received, from my own phone. I had to fill in email addresses and the exact topic of the emails she had sent, but she remembered only two email addresses and only 1 topic, so I feared this wouldn't be enough. And indeed, this went wrong, because when I sent the form, there was a message that there were too many retrieval attempts and that her account is blocked now. We have no idea how to retrieve her account anymore now and she really need access again because unfortunately, all the important national organizations send her important emails there and many important documents are stored only in her email messages, because she never saved them to her files or printed them. How can we get help from a human Microsoft staff member? We're from The Netherlands.

Answer 1

Hello Ally

Thank you for reaching out, and I’m truly sorry to hear that your Microsoft account has been . I understand how stressful and upsetting it can be to lose access to an account, especially when it may contain important emails, files, subscriptions, or personal information.

Unfortunately, as community moderators, we do not have access to Microsoft accounts and cannot view account details, verify ownership, reset passwords, recover accounts, or make any changes on a user's behalf. For privacy and security reasons, we also do not have any tools that would allow us to intervene in the account recovery process.

While I understand this may not be the answer you were hoping for, the best course of action is to follow Microsoft's official account recovery guidance. The support article below provides the recommended steps to secure and recover a hacked or compromised account:

• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/accounts-billing/manage/microsoft-account-has-been-locked

The article will walk you through securing your account, reviewing recent activity, updating your security information, and working through the recovery process if you can no longer sign in.

I sincerely apologize that we cannot provide more direct assistance in this situation. I know how concerning account security issues can be, and I hope the guidance in the article helps you regain access to your account as quickly as possible. Wishing you the very best with the recovery process.