Password · guide

How to change Microsoft password when four things share the name

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated · 15 min read

How to change Microsoft password: sign in at account.microsoft.com, open Security, and select Change password. The harder part is that four different passwords answer to that name, and three of them are changed somewhere else entirely. This page says which one you are holding before you change the wrong one.

Six things called “my Microsoft password”, where each one is changed, and what changing it does not touch
Which passwordWhere it is changedWhat it does not touchSource
The Microsoft account password account.microsoft.com, then Security, then Change password Nothing — this is the one the others resolve to Change your Microsoft account password
The Outlook.com mailbox password The same place. There is no separate one It is not a second password to keep in step Change your password in Outlook.com
Windows sign-in, Microsoft account Settings, Accounts, Sign-in options, Password, Change Not only the PC: it changes the account everywhere Change or reset your Microsoft account password in Windows
Windows sign-in, local account The same Settings screen, or the sign-in screen with security questions Nothing on any Microsoft service — it is a password on that PC Change or reset your local account password in Windows
A mailbox added into the Outlook app At that provider — Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Xfinity — not in Outlook Outlook stores the new one; it cannot set it Change or update your email password in Outlook for Windows
A work or school account passwordreset.microsoftonline.com Not the personal account dashboard, which will not offer it Change your Microsoft account password
Which password you are holding, decided by where you are being asked for it A sign-in box on a Microsoft site and the Outlook.com mailbox use one password, changed at account.microsoft.com. A Windows sign-in uses either that same password or a local one. A mailbox added into the Outlook app uses the password of whoever runs that mailbox. Asked on a Microsoft site Asked by Windows Asked inside Outlook The account password Outlook.com, OneDrive, Xbox and the dashboard share it. Changed at account.microsoft.com. One of two A Microsoft account: the box on the left, everywhere. A local account: this PC only, security questions. Not Microsoft’s at all If the address is Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud or Xfinity, the password belongs to them. Outlook only holds it. AI Tools Primer · figure
Drawn from four Microsoft support pages, each of which answers for one product only. The question none of them asks is the one on this figure: where were you standing when the box appeared? Figure drawn by AI Tools Primer.

The five steps, when it is the account password

Microsoft documents this path for a personal account whose current password you still know. If you do not know it, it is a reset rather than a change, and the route is different.

  1. Go to account.microsoft.com and sign in. This is the account dashboard, not the mailbox and not Windows. Signing in here proves you hold the password you are about to replace.
  2. Open Security. Microsoft’s instruction for an existing session is to “go to Security then select the Change Password link at the top of the page”.
  3. Select Change password. It is a link at the top of the Security page, not one of the tiles below it.
  4. Enter the new password. An optional checkbox on this screen, in Microsoft’s words, “prompts you to update your password every 72 days”. It is off unless you tick it, and the section below is about whether you should.
  5. Select Save. The change applies to the account, so it applies to Outlook.com, to a Windows PC signed in with that account, and to every other Microsoft service at the same moment.
The path from the account dashboard to the change password screen account.microsoft.com, then Security, then the Change password link at the top of the page, then the new password and Save. Personal account, password known account.microsoft.com Sign in first Security Top menu of the page Change password A link at the top, not a tile New password Then Save Nothing on this path exists inside the Outlook app, on any version of Windows. AI Tools Primer · figure
The four screens Microsoft names, in order, for a personal account. The amber box is the only one where anything is typed. Figure drawn by AI Tools Primer.

Why this question is confusing, and it is not your fault. Microsoft has one support page per product, and each one is correct about its own product and silent about the rest. Search for this and you get five results from the same company: one about the account, one about Outlook.com, one about Windows, one about the local account, one about the app. Every one of them answers a question you did not ask, unless you already knew which of the five you were in. The table above is those five pages put side by side, which is the thing none of them does. It is also why “how do i change my outlook password” and “how to change my microsoft password” describe one job and not two: if the address ends in outlook.com or hotmail.com, Microsoft documents a single password and a single place to change it.

What happens when the mailbox in Outlook belongs to somebody else The password is changed at the provider, Outlook then fails to collect mail and asks for it, and the new password is typed into Outlook, which stores it. 1 2 3 Change it at the provider Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Xfinity Outlook stops collecting and asks for the new one Type it into Outlook It stores; it never sets There is no step here in which Outlook changes a password, because there is no such step. AI Tools Primer · figure
The order Microsoft gives for a third-party mailbox in Outlook for Windows: provider first, Outlook second. Reversing it is why the app appears to refuse. Figure drawn by AI Tools Primer.

How to change password in Outlook, when Outlook is the app and not the mailbox. This is the single most common dead end, and Microsoft states the order plainly: the password is changed with the email provider first, and only then does Outlook need the new one. What people meet instead is a box that keeps reappearing after every wrong attempt, which looks like a refusal to change the password and is really the app asking for one that no longer works. If the address ends in outlook.com or hotmail.com, the provider is Microsoft and the route is the dashboard above. If it ends in anything else, the provider is somebody else and Microsoft’s own page sends you to them by name.

The checkbox that offers to make you do this every 72 days

It is on the screen where you type the new one, and it is optional. Microsoft describes it as a security tip: an optional checkbox “which prompts you to update your password every 72 days”. Ticking it is one click, and untangling it later is a search.

The public guidance says the opposite. The United States federal guidance on digital identity, NIST Special Publication 800-63B, tells the services themselves that “verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically)”. The same document keeps one exception, and it is the useful half: verifiers “SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise”.

Which is a rule you can act on. A date on a calendar is not evidence of anything, and the passwords people invent on a schedule are the previous one with a digit moved. A message saying your address appeared in a breach is evidence, and that is the day to change it — along with anywhere else the same password was used.

How to change Windows password, and the two accounts hiding behind that phrase. Windows signs you in with either a Microsoft account or a local account, and the difference decides the reset. With a Microsoft account, Settings, Accounts, Sign-in options, Password, Change is a shortcut to the same account password as the dashboard, and you will “need to enter your old password to create a new one”. With a local account, the password lives on that computer alone, and when it is forgotten the way back is the sign-in screen: the arrow next to the password field, then OK, then Reset password, then the security questions set when the account was created. If none were ever set, that door is closed, and Microsoft says so rather than offering a workaround.

Three answers Microsoft gives in one line each

Each is quoted from the support pages listed below, read on 7 September 2026.

The Outlook.com password is not a separate password “Your Outlook.com password is the same as your Microsoft account password.” One sentence, and it answers the most common form of this question.
The Outlook app changes nothing You must change the password “with your email provider” first. Only then: “Then you will need to update the password in Outlook.”
Nobody at Microsoft can look it up for you If the published routes fail, “Microsoft support cannot help you retrieve or circumvent a lost or forgotten password”, and its agents “are not allowed to send password reset links”. Anyone offering to is not from Microsoft.

What a change does to everything already signed in. A Microsoft account password is one credential shared by the mailbox, the PC, OneDrive and the store, so replacing it replaces it everywhere at once. That is the useful property when somebody else has it, and the annoying one in front of a printer that has been scanning into that mailbox for two years. Before changing it, list the things that sign in on their own: a phone mail app, a desktop client, a scanner. None of them will say they have stopped; they will go quiet.

And the case where a change is not the whole job. If you are here because a message said your password had been exposed, changing this one is necessary and not sufficient: the value of a stolen password is everywhere else it was used. Change it here first, because the mailbox is what resets everything else, then work through the accounts that share it. What to do when a service you use is breached covers the rest of that list, and the two clean-ups after turning two-factor off covers the case where the extra step is what is blocking you.

Every path, screen name and quoted sentence here comes from five Microsoft support pages, read on 7 September 2026 in the English (US) version of each; the guidance on periodic changes is quoted from NIST Special Publication 800-63B, read the same day. Which of the six passwords you are probably holding is our judgement.

Where to start

Four ways in.

“I know the password and just want a new one.”
Five steps — see the five steps
“Outlook keeps asking and will not accept anything.”
That is the app, not the password — the app that cannot
“Is this the same as my Windows password?”
It depends on one thing — the two windows accounts
“Should I change it every few months?”
There is a published answer — the 72 day box

The app that cannot

Outlook for Windows stores an email password and never sets one. Everything that looks like a refusal in the app is the app asking for a password that was changed, or not changed, somewhere else.

Reporting phishing in OutlookFour clicks, and the reason reporting does not block the sender.Open this guide → Updating an email password on a phoneThe same trap on iOS: the mail app asks, and the change happens elsewhere.Open this guide → Resetting a Gmail passwordThe provider route for the commonest third-party mailbox inside Outlook.Open this guide →

The two Windows accounts

A Microsoft account and a local account both sign you into Windows, and only one of them exists anywhere else. Which you have decides both the change and the reset.

Where a BitLocker recovery key isThe key that a Microsoft account may be holding for the drive itself.Open this guide → Forgotten Mac passwordThe same split on the other system, with three routes instead of two.Open this guide → Factory resetting Windows 11What a reset keeps and what it takes with it, when no password works at all.Open this guide →

One password, many doors

This one credential opens the mailbox, the PC, the storage and the store. That is the reason to protect it well, and the reason a change is felt in places you had forgotten about.

Two-factor and two-stepTwo steps from one category is not two factors, and the standard that never uses either name.Open this guide → The Opera password managerWhere a browser keeps the copy, and the two questions Opera’s own help never answers.Open this guide → The Firefox password managerThe other browser drawer, and the one setting that empties it if you forget it.Open this guide → The Edge password managerOne condition decides whether you have it at all, and it is which profile you signed in with.Open this guide → When Google Password Manager will not answerThree documented causes, and the address to check first — plus the one case where that check needs a key of its own.Open this guide → Changing a Facebook passwordA daily cap, and the phone number that two-factor takes out of play for a reset.Open this guide → After a data breachWhat a reused password turns into once a company loses a list of them.Open this guide → A ChatGPT passwordWhen the ChatGPT sign-in is the Microsoft one, this password is the one behind it.Open this guide →

Questions people also ask

How do I change my Microsoft password?

Sign in at account.microsoft.com, open Security, and select the Change password link at the top of that page. Enter the new password and select Save. The change applies to the account, so Outlook.com and a Windows PC signed in with it follow immediately.

Is my Microsoft account password the same as my email password?

For an Outlook.com or Hotmail address, yes, and Microsoft says so in one line: “Your Outlook.com password is the same as your Microsoft account password.” For a Gmail or Yahoo address you read inside Outlook, no — that password belongs to Google or Yahoo.

Why can’t I reset my Outlook email password?

Because the Outlook app has no way to. Microsoft’s instruction is that you change it “with your email provider” and then “update the password in Outlook”. The app asks for a password it can no longer use; it never sets one.

Is Windows password the same as Microsoft password?

Only if the PC signs in with a Microsoft account, in which case changing either changes both. A local account is a password on that computer alone, and it is reset from the sign-in screen by answering the security questions chosen when the account was created.

How to change my Outlook password when the address is a Gmail one?

At Google, not in Outlook. Microsoft lists the third-party providers explicitly — Gmail, Yahoo, Apple, Xfinity — and links out to each. Our own route for the Google side is resetting a Gmail password.

How to change Microsoft account password for a work or school login?

Not from the personal dashboard, which will not offer it. Microsoft directs work and school accounts to passwordreset.microsoftonline.com, and an administrator may have switched that page off for your organisation.

Not covered here. It does not cover recovering an account you have been locked out of, which is a reset with identity checks rather than a change, and Microsoft keeps it on a separate page.

It does not cover a work or school account beyond naming the address it uses, because what that page allows is set by an administrator and differs from one organisation to the next.

And it does not rank password managers, which is a different question; the way in is the guides on passwords and the ways in. What holds instead is simple: every screen name, path and limit on this page is quoted from Microsoft’s own support pages with the date it was read, and the advice about changing a password on a schedule is quoted from the United States federal guidance rather than asserted.

Sources

  1. Microsoft Support — Change your Microsoft account password: the dashboard path, the Change Password link at the top of Security, the optional 72-day prompt, and the address for a work or school account — support.microsoft.com, read 7 September 2026.
  2. Microsoft Support — Change your password in Outlook.com: the sentence that the Outlook.com password is the Microsoft account password — support.microsoft.com, read 7 September 2026.
  3. Microsoft Support — Change or update your email password in Outlook for Windows: the order — provider first, Outlook second — and the named third-party providers — support.microsoft.com, read 7 September 2026.
  4. Microsoft Support — Change or reset your Microsoft account password in Windows: the Settings path, and the statement that support cannot retrieve a forgotten password — support.microsoft.com, read 7 September 2026.
  5. Microsoft Support — Change or reset your local account password in Windows: the sign-in screen route and the security questions set at account creation — support.microsoft.com, read 7 September 2026.
  6. NIST — Special Publication 800-63B, Digital Identity Guidelines: the clause against arbitrary periodic change, and the one exception the standard keeps — pages.nist.gov, read 7 September 2026.

Written by Alberto Gulotta

Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.

Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.

Written on 8 September 2026.

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