Two passwords for two purposes.
You have one email address that you use to identify yourself to Microsoft. That’s your Microsoft account. As you might expect, it has a password or some other form of authorization. It might be what you use to sign in to your PC, for example.
When you use that email address to read email, though, you might need to use a completely different password.
Huh?
Buckle up. It’s easy to get confused on this one.
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Microsoft account passwords
You can set up your Microsoft account with a non-Microsoft email, like Gmail, which can lead to two passwords: one for Microsoft services and another for Gmail. Always use the password tied to the service you’re accessing. To avoid confusion, consider using a dedicated Microsoft email for your Microsoft account.
Related
What Is a “Microsoft Account”?
A Microsoft account is almost any account you have with Microsoft, and there's a high likelihood you already have one.#23505
Traditional Microsoft account
We normally think of a Microsoft account as being a Microsoft-supplied email address and the credentials1 associated with it. You use the same credentials to sign into your email as you do to sign in to other Microsoft services or your computer.
The Microsoft account I use for many of my examples is “askleoexample@hotmail.com”, for example.
Your Microsoft account is both an email account and an “everything else Microsoft” account. You use the same credentials for both actions because it’s a single account.
Very simple. Thankfully, it’s the most common scenario.
Non-traditional Microsoft account
This is where things get a little confusing. I just created a Microsoft account using my Gmail address2.
My Gmail account has its own email address — say askleotest@gmail.com — and its own password. That’s how I sign in to Google services and read email sent to that address.
When I used that email address to set up a Microsoft account, I was asked to create a new password for that account. I could have used the same password as I did for signing into Google, but that’s not good security3. So I specified a different password.
It appears that this email address — askleotest@gmail.com — now has two different passwords: one for Gmail and one for Microsoft.
Two passwords in practice
Here’s the thing to remember: different passwords for different services.
- When signing into Gmail and Google services, use the email address and the password associated with the Google account.
- When signing into Microsoft and Microsoft-related services, use the email address and the password associated with the Microsoft account.
It’s just the same as using your email address as your user ID on any other service. For example, if you set up a Spotify account with that email address, then:
- When signing into Spotify, use the email address with your Spotify password.
Microsoft is just another service where I used my Gmail address as my user ID.
Except… there’s still confusion ahead.
So which password do I use again?
Let’s say your Microsoft account uses a non-Microsoft email address as its identifier, as above where I’ve used askleotest@gmail.com to identify my Microsoft account.
Now let’s say you’re configuring Outlook (any version) to access your email. It asks for your password. Which one do you specify?
- It’s Outlook, from Microsoft, so do you specify the Microsoft account password associated with your email address?
- It’s email from your not-Microsoft email service that you’re trying to access, so do you specify the password associated with that email service?
The answer is the second. To understand why, we need to pay careful attention to what we’re asking for.
In this case, we’re asking an email interface to access our email. To access email from a Gmail account, I need to specify my Gmail password. That we happen to be using a Microsoft program to access that email has no bearing on which password we use, because we are not signing into a Microsoft service; we’re signing into a Google service.
Use the password for the services you’re attempting to access. That means the Microsoft password for Microsoft services like OneDrive, Office, or signing into your PC, and the Google password for Google services such as Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, and others.
Do this
This is why I recommend setting up a dedicated Microsoft email address for your Microsoft account. It avoids this situation completely. Microsoft account = Microsoft password.
If it’s too late, or you decide you want to use an email address from a different provider as your identifier for your Microsoft account, then you need to be aware of which service you’re attempting to access when it comes time to provide the right password.
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Footnotes & References
1: I say “password or credentials” because, of course, you can have passwordless Microsoft accounts and can use other forms of identification when you sign in. None of that really makes a difference here, so I’ll use “credentials” to mean passwords or however you confirm your identity when signing in to your Microsoft account.
2: I used a Gmail address/account as my example, but this applies to any email address not provided by Microsoft.
3: If either account is ever compromised and the password revealed, both accounts are compromised. Unique passwords prevent this scenario.
Another tangentially related thing. Gmail allows periods (full stops for you Brits and others). Those periods mean nothing to Google ask.leo.example@gmail.com to them is the same as askleoexample@gmail.com. BUT if you use ask.leo.example@gmail.com to sign up for Microsoft, Bluesky, Facebook etc., those periods make a difference and askleoexample@gmail.com can’t be used to log in to those accounts, although it can be used to log into ask.leo.example@gmail.com on Google
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This is even more confusing if you have to sign in to Outlook, part of Microsoft 365, with your Microsoft account password, and then sign into your Gmail with the Gmail password. Then what do you do if you try to use your Gmail address as the recovery address for your Microsoft account. It was much easier when your Microsoft account forced you to use a Microsoft email address. Then you get an Android cellphone, and your shop offers to set it up for you. Often they will set up another email account to be used as the phone’s Google account, so you end up with two Google accounts. What a muddle.
When I initially set up my Microsoft account, I used the email address from the ISP I used at that time. I later switched to a different ISP, so I decided to set up an outlook email account, and I changed the credentials on my Microsoft account to reflect the change, by adding the Outlook.com email address to my Microsoft account, and removing the email address from my previous ISP. I no longer remember the steps I had to take to make the change in credentials, but I do remember that they seemed rather convoluted/not intuitive, so it’s not anything I’d recommend if it can be avoided.
Ernie