Accessing outlook accounts set up for my children

Hi,

Straight answer on this one, because the honest version will save you hours.

There is no parent override. You'd expect that being the family organizer lets you reset your kids' passwords, but Microsoft removed that option from family settings for security reasons. Recovery is strictly per account through the standard self-service flows, and even Microsoft support agents are restricted from resetting passwords or bypassing the verification. That's policy, not an unhelpful agent.

So there are exactly two supported paths:

1. Go to https://account.live.com/password/reset and enter the child's address. This only works if a recovery phone or email exists on the account. You say there's none, but try it anyway, sometimes something got attached at creation that you've forgotten about.
2. The account recovery form at https://account.live.com/acsr. Do this from the same computer, browser and home network you used when you created the accounts, because a recognized device and location genuinely improves your odds. Then give everything you can remember: passwords you likely used, the exact name and birthdate you entered when creating them, and roughly when they were created. You can submit the form twice a day and Microsoft responds within 24 to 72 hours.

Now the honest part. The form works by matching what you provide against the account's history, and an account that has never sent an email, made a purchase or signed in anywhere has almost no history to match. So for never-used accounts, the form usually fails no matter how truthful you are.

If that happens, here's the silver lining: those accounts are empty, so nothing of value is locked away. The practical answer is to let them go and create fresh accounts. The old addresses stay tied to the locked accounts, so pick slightly different ones. This time, create the accounts through family.microsoft.com so they sit in your family group, and the moment each account exists, add your own phone number and email as its security info, then store the passwords in a password manager. With recovery info attached, a forgotten password becomes a two-minute reset instead of this situation.

References: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/reset-a-forgotten-microsoft-account-password-eff4f067-5042-c1a3-fe72-b04d60556c37 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/help-with-the-microsoft-account-recovery-form-b19c02d1-a782-dee6-93c3-dc8113b20c42