Office 365 Password Reset GA
Sooner or later, you may forget the password that you need to sign in to your account. It happens to just about everyone. If you forget your Office 365 password, and you’re not an Office 365 administrator, confess your predicament to an administrator in your organization, and the kind administrator resets your password.
If you’re the administrator, it’s a little more complicated. If you’re not the only administrator, you can ask another administrator to reset your password. If you are the only administrator, or if another administrator isn’t available, you can use the new automated administrator password reset process. On the Office 365 sign-in page, click Forgot your password? to start the process. We want to protect the security of your account, so you have to follow several steps. As you step through the process, you’ll receive an email containing a link. When you click that link, a text message containing a code is sent to your mobile phone, and a Web page is displayed where you enter that code. After you enter the code and click Next, then you enter a new password.
For the administrator password reset to work, you must have already provided a phone number on which you can receive a text (SMS) message and an alternate email address. The email address must not be your Office 365 email address, because if you can’t sign in to your Office 365 account, you can’t retrieve email sent to that address. You enter this information in the user management area. To get there, click Admin, and under Management, click Users. On the Settings tab, you enter the email address in the Alternate email address box. On the Properties tab, you enter the mobile phone number in the Mobile phone box.
Once you submit the reset request, you need to respond promptly to the email and to the text message. There is a 10-minute timeout period each for the email and for the text message, after which you'll have to restart the process.
If you haven’t provided alternate email address and mobile telephone information, you may see a popup window that prompts you to provide this information when you sign in to Office 365. Taking a few seconds to type the information may spare you a headache later.
For more information about how an administrator can reset his or her own password, see the Help topics:
- For Office 365 for enterprises, see Reset an administrator's password
- For Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, see Reset an administrator's password