After a decade+ using 4 email addresses from our ISP, they suddenly became nonexistent – I may never know if they were stolen or if it was the result of whatever change / screwup at the cable service. To say it’s a nightmare would be an understatement. The accounts used to setup Windows were the worst to change – I suggest everyone take some proactive steps to [hopefully] make it easier if you ever lose an email address like I did.
From time-to-time Microsoft will ask you to verify your identity by entering a code they send via email or SMS. By visiting your account page at Microsoft via Settings go to the Security tab and click the choice to enhance your security, making sure any additional email addresses are current, making sure you have at least one, and enabling a cell phone number for SMS texts, which may or may not work – I had 50/50 success with a Verizon number. You can also print a recovery code [suggest Save to PDF] that can be used once, then you need to generate another one. If you cannot receive the code when Microsoft decides to require it, you can be locked out of changing anything related to your account for 30 days. That happened to one of my accounts. Unfortunately, what you are asked & when varied from one account to the next – I cannot say what will trigger Microsoft to ask you to verify your identity, and what your choices will be, because nothing was ever the same twice. I don’t mention my [Fido2] Yubikey because in this case it was useless.
That said, the 1st thing you want to do if you use your OneDrive account is to make sure everything is stored on your hard disk locally. Then to change the email address associated with your Microsoft account, go to your online account page via Settings. Click Your Info and next to your email address click the edit link. Start by adding an alias – you can add an existing email account or fill in a name to use [the part of the email address before @] and Microsoft will create a new account using outlook[.]com. [Note: it is a real email address that you can use like any other]. Next you click the link to make that alias Primary, then you remove the old email address, which will [allegedly] completely delete it from Microsoft’s records. As above, how many times you must verify your identity will vary. Now you need to right click the OneDrive Taskbar icon, select settings, & then click the account tab. You’ll see your old email address – click the link below it to disconnect your PC from that OneDrive account. Now click the button to add your new account & sign in. You may or may not also see a prompt to sign into OneDrive in its main Window and signing in either place may or may not work – you may have to exit & restart OneDrive.
If you have more than one copy of Windows using the same account the email change will propagate from one copy to the next, but you’ll still have to change the OneDrive account in each copy of Windows yourself.