How to Add a Recovery Email Address to Outlook.com
Including a recovery email address is easy to do: Verify that the email password recovery address was added by returning to the Update your security info section. Your Microsoft email account should also receive an email that says you updated your security information.
Why Do You Need a Recovery Email Address?
Outlook.com is home to your Outlook, Hotmail, and other Microsoft email accounts. Your password is the key to all your email there. If you forget your password though, you’ll need to recover your account and create a new one. To simplify the password change, add a secondary email address or phone number to Outlook.com, so that you can reset your password and access your account while keeping your account secure. A recovery email address makes it easy to change your password and more difficult for your account to be hacked. Microsoft sends a code to an alternate email address to validate you are who you say you are. You enter the code in a field and then you are allowed to make changes to your account—including a new password.
Select a Strong Password
Microsoft encourages its email users to use a strong password with their Microsoft email address. Microsoft’s recommendations include:
Use a password that is significantly different from previous passwords.Use a sentence or phrase converted to a string of numbers, initials, and symbols.Make your password hard to guess by avoiding names of family members, birthdays, or your favorite band.Don’t use the same password for another account.Don’t use a single word that is in the dictionary for your password.Don’t use common passwords such as password, iloveyou, or 12345678.
Also, Microsoft recommends turning on two-step verification to make it difficult for someone else to sign in to your Microsoft account. With two-step verification activated, whenever you sign in on a new device or from a different location, Microsoft sends a security code that you must enter on the sign-in page.
