Accidentally deleted hotmail.com email alias

Question

Accidentally deleted hotmail.com email alias

Paul Phung 0

Hi,

Recently, I have been receiving a lot of MS Authenticator notifications and I was getting worried that someone is trying to hack/access my account. After googling a little, I found that I can disable login using my hotmail.com address. I went into my account > account info, set my outlook.com alias as primary and got an error so I tried to set another live.com alias and got the same error that I couldn't set it. I refreshed the page and it turned out that it did set it. After that, I thought I was removing the hotmail.com address for login only. Went into my hotmail.com and tested sending email and it failed with error "You don't have permission to send messages from this mailbox.". I've then try to send an email to the hotmail.com address and got error back "Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups". Is there a way to get my hotmail.com address to be able to send and receive emails again?

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Answer 1

Gunasekar N 71,205 Independent Advisor

Hello, thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A.

Could you check your Microsoft account under "Manage how you sign in to your account"? Is your Hotmail.com address still listed there, or has it been removed?

If the @hotmail.com alias has been removed, unfortunately, this change cannot be reversed, and you cannot associate that email address with any other Microsoft account. Removing an alias permanently deletes the email address, and this action is permanent.

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Paul Phung 0 Reputation points

2026-07-02T06:10:33.3433333+00:00

Thanks for the quick response, Gunaskar! Unfortunately it's no longer listed. I removed it on this exact page because I was receiving numerous Authenticator notifications, thinking that was the way to stop people from using the @hotmail.com address for signing in. I recall that aliases used to have a separate page to avoid confusion with account sign-ins. I strongly suggest that the alias management page be reinstated in its own section. The current page for managing how you sign in to your account does not clarify that aliases have been removed, which could lead people to mistakenly remove their primary @hotmail.com alias for signing in.
Hornblower409 10,570 Reputation points

2026-07-02T15:51:30.3433333+00:00

@Paul Phung

I recall that aliases used to have a separate page to avoid confusion with account sign-ins.

It's still there. https://account.live.com/SignInPreferences vs https://account.live.com/names/manage

I was receiving numerous Authenticator notifications, thinking that was the way to stop people from using the hotmail.com

It can be confusing. You are not the first person who accidently removed an alias trying to stop bogus Authenticator events.

All I can suggest is that next time, use the detailed steps in the Answer by "Hornblower409 on Feb 27, 2026" in
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5789093/i-get-a-few-2fa-notifications-from-canada-daily-us
Paul Phung 0 Reputation points

2026-07-02T17:02:32.6433333+00:00

Thanks Hornblower409! I will keep that in mind next time. It would also be great to be able to revert these accidental removals like within an hour of deletion.
Hornblower409 10,570 Reputation points

2026-07-02T17:31:58.0733333+00:00

@Paul Phung said

It would also be great to be able to revert these accidental removals

You can for an outlook.com alias. No time limit.

But Microsoft has deprecated the hotmail.com domain and won't let you create a new hotmail alias or add it back if it is ever removed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5920006/alias-hotmail