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Live ID Reserved Domains

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If you or your users are running into this error when trying to create Live IDs, read on.

The portion of your e-mail address that follows the @ symbol is part of a "reserved domain" such as live.com, hotmail.com, msn.com or passport.com. Please type a different e-mail address.

The HealthVault sign-in process exposes a "Create a Live ID" link for users who don't already have one.  But there are two different ways to create a Live ID that are worth knowing about:

  1. You can wrap an existing email address with a Live ID.  This is referred to as an EASI Live ID by the technical folks but you won't see this term in consumer-facing pages.  You can wrap any email address with an EASI Live ID as long as that email address isn't on a "managed domain" like hotmail.com, verizon.net or msn.com.  Addresses on these managed domains already *are* Live IDs so wrapping doesn't make sense.  If a user enters an email address on a managed domain into the account sign-up box then they will get the error message above.
  2. You can create a new Live ID from scratch.  This new Live ID will come with its own Hotmail inbox.  HealthVault used to expose this option within the sign-up flow but it added extra screens & confusion to the process so we pulled it out.  You can still direct your users to that workflow via https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx.

So if you see this error you are probably trying to do one of two things:

  1. If you are trying to turn an existing email into a Live ID then chances are that email already *is* a Live ID.  If you don't remember the password for this Live ID anymore, you can either reset it (try https://windowslivehelp.com ... the current password reset page is here) or go create a new one.
  2. If you are trying to create a new Live ID then you should go to https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx instead.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2009
    I have and e-mail that is @live.com, and this does happen to me. But when I try to sign in with windows live it tells me that my email doesn't exist?

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2009
    The behaviors that you describe are consistent with the user experience that you'd get when the email address you are trying does not exist yet.  LiveId has two slightly different sign-up flows:

  • wrap existing email account with a LiveId

  • create a brand new email account + LiveId In the first flow, you already have email through another provider and you just want to be able to use this address to sign in to LiveId.  That is the flow that you must be in if you are seeing the message above.  You can only enter email addresses here that are not against domains that are powered by LiveId, which we call "reserved domains." If you have an address through a reserved domain then the domain administrator decides which aliases are LiveIds and which aren't.  But @live.com is administered by Microsoft and all aliases there should be LiveIds. What happens if you go to the "Create a New LiveId" flow at https://signup.live.com/ and try to create your @live.com email address again?  Does it tell you that this name is already taken?

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2009
    I am trying to get to the right person which so far has been next to impossible to somehow remove the "reserved domain" status of a domain that I control.  It once was a Windows Custom Domain and for more than a year it hasn't been.  I deleted all the email addresses and then removed the domain from my managed accounts. When anyone tries to use their email address to get a live ID associated in that domain it is rejected as being a managed domain. I could use some help here. Thanks

  • Anonymous
    October 05, 2010
    Updated contact info for support on Windows Live Custom Domains: windowslivehelp.com/product.aspx. -Chris Tremonte Microsoft HealthVault Developer Program

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2011
    Good question, Kris. I don't have first-hand experience with that scenario but my best guess is that the @hotmail.ca address already is itself a LiveId b/c it is on a reserved domain... and that maybe the LiveId "add an email address to your account" workflow only allows non-LiveId email addresses to be added. Did that make any sense? To say it a different way -- I am hypothesizing that the "add an email address" function does not allow you to merge two LiveIds into one, but it does let you add a non-LiveId email address to an existing LiveId. I do know that the "create a new LiveId" workflow is sensitive to whether the email address is on a reserved domain. Email addresses on reserved domains already are LiveIds, so you can't "wrap" such an email address with a new LiveId. In some cases (Live@Edu comes to mind) an email address on a reserved domain may not yet be a LiveId but the central Microsoft system cannot create such LiveIds b/c that function has been delegated to an administrator who controls the domain in question. Please reach out to us via the HealthVault Developer Forum (social.msdn.microsoft.com/.../threads) or via the HealthVault Developer Support request form (support.microsoft.com/.../default.aspx) if you have further questions on this. We don't follow/moderate the blog comments as rigorously as we monitor the Forums & form input. -Chris Tremonte Solutions Architect, Microsoft Health Solutions Group