I am upset with Microsoft right now.

[iamtim]

Total "first world" problems, here, but I'm frustrated and so you all get to read about it.

I have two Microsoft accounts. One used to be a "work" account and the other a "personal" account. The personal account has free lifetime 25gb SkyDrive storage because of a promotional thing I took part in, and the work account is the one I use on my Surface and Lumia 920. Up until recently this worked great; I had them linked so I could easily switch back and forth between them.

But then Microsoft did away with linked accounts. For dumb reasons, I should add, there were hundreds of ways they could have fixed the situation and kept linked accounts, but that's a different rant for a different day. Anyway, I tried to keep working as was using the log out/log in process, but whoo boy is that a royal pain.

So I figured I'd just standardize on one and close the other. Contacted @skydrive on Twitter, no way to move the 25gb from the personal account to the work account. Sigh, ok, fine, I don't even push the regular 7gb limit so whatever. Looked into moving the primary email address on the personal account as an alias on the work account, can't do that without a 30 day delay. Talked to @outlook on Twitter, they couldn't help me. Filed a support request, they couldn't help me. According to Microsoft, there is absolutely. no. way. that you can move an alias from one Microsoft account to the other without a 30 day delay (which is complete and total B.S.; I *know* they could totally and easily move aliases around, they just don't *want* to do it so they put a 30 day delay in the mix to dissuade people from doing it frivolously). Here's the best part, though... I thought I'd add my personal account as a "send and receive" address on my work account, but it isn't allowed; instead they offered me to page where I could link my accounts which they no longer allow!

Slightly related to all of this, my work Microsoft account primary alias is the same as my work email address, which causes confusion. So I figured I'd change the primary alias on my work Microsoft account to its @outlook.com address instead of my Exchange address. Unfortunately, that made my Lumia 920 stop syncing and, as it turns out, the ONLY way to change the Microsoft account primary alias on the phone is via a factory reset and a re-setup from scratch. Which is just... beyond me, but whatever. I wasn't in a spot to factory reset my phone at that point, so I switched the primary alias back so my phone would sync.

The next morning I backed up all my pictures and prepared for the factory reset. I logged back in to change my primary alias moments before I actually did the factory reset and guess what it told me? Microsoft tracks how many times you change your primary alias and evidently those two changes surpassed the threshold. It told me to try again in a week. I'm so glad I'd decided to do the factory reset AFTER I changed the alias; had I of done the factory reset THEN found I couldn't change the primary alias, I'd be seeing red.

Outlook.com and Windows Phone are both really great. But all this just seems like they're going out of their way to inconvenience people. And yeah, I realize I'm just ******** and it's all not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but to be unable to configure my accounts the way that I want them because of arbitrary, nonsensical Microsoft rules just makes me want to break things.

Sigh.

 

[stmav]

Just think of it as really good security so your account can't get hacked. :wink: But yeah, that stinks. Sorry.

 

[daveakowalski]

Nothing to constructive to say other than I feel for you... been through a very similar song and dance, and it is why I like to keep work and play on separate services.

 

[Reflexx]

It's all related to security, not about being frivolous.

But those hackers and criminals have made things suck for everyone else.

 

[martinmc78]

Yeah the account protection stuff sucks. Have the same sort of set up but luckily my phone, surface, xbox and home PC all use my personal account as primary. I kept my work email account purely web based. The only problem I have is with Skype log in on the surface - that's got all my work contacts on rather than my personal ones and seeing as you cant change log in yet on the surface version of Skype that kinda sucks

 

[iamtim]

It's all related to security, not about being frivolous.

Yeah, no offense, but no sale. They've got two-factor authentication, they've got identify verification steps. Yet they don't use them for this, they just place arbitrary "waiting periods" instead. You can allow a user to make the changes they want AND keep secure, Microsoft just isn't doing that in these cases.

 

[walter1832]

Your right. First world problem.

 

[thed]

I generally like Outlook email better than gmail, but man, the disabling of linked accounts is frustrating to me too. I have 2 accounts that used to be linked. I use them both pretty often, and the account linking made it really easy and seamless. So then they get rid of account linking and tell me to use an alias instead. I think "ok, fair enough, I'll set my other account up as an alias for the first one." So then I try to add the second account as an alias and it tells me that I can't, and I have to add it as a linked account instead? WTF?

This is just lack of attention to detail from MS. I don't understand what they were thinking when they did this.

 

[jbigelow]

I've said it before, I'll say it again, Microsoft's identity management sucks. I had hoped to transition my primary email to my outlook.com account, but all my previous Microsoft "things" (Skydrive space, Xbox video purchases) were tied to my Hotmail account. Because Microsoft can't do aliasing right my outlook.com account is slowly becoming my throwaway/spam account and my hotmail address will probably plod along for another 10 years or so.

 

[_Emi_]

Yeah, no offense, but no sale. They've got two-factor authentication, they've got identify verification steps. Yet they don't use them for this, they just place arbitrary "waiting periods" instead. You can allow a user to make the changes they want AND keep secure, Microsoft just isn't doing that in these cases.

and then you cant use two-factor authentication with linked accounts.... so no, you couldnt have used it if you had your accounts linked. because it was insecure, becuase it was a 2 way thing, if you linked an account to other, the other account would have Access to your account with no verification.

so yeah they did it because of security reasons, there was NO way you could have used linked accounts with two factor thing authentication. and thats why they removed it so people would go and use the feature "users were screaming in masses they wanted, and thats why they didnt switch from google and google was safer".
also it causes more problems than good! example, I lost access to 3 of my 5 accounts for that, because linked accounts stopped working and then everything stopped working little by little, so linked accounts was buggy. I stopped trying to gain access to my accounts but I will try later, in some weeks maybe. maybe then it will work.


So while security and bug reasons were the reason they stopped linked accounts, this doesnt change the fact that dealing with Outlook team its not easy sometimes.
This case sounds though like someone who messed up with their phone and everything, and it didn't work as he expected. I cant blame outlook/skydrive or Microsoft team on that.

 

[iamtim]

there was NO way you could have used linked accounts with two factor thing authentication

...I didn't say that you could. I was talking about NOW, saying that if Microsoft wanted to they could both secure accounts and allow users to make settings changes without 30 day delays.

This case sounds though like someone who messed up with their phone and everything, and it didn't work as he expected.

That is not what happened here.

 

[kriz225]

I hear ya. I had a very similar issue.

When I first became aware of aliases (shortly after the @outlook.com switch by MS) I decided to snatch up a snazzy name as an alias to my old personal Hotmail account just so I could reserve it for later use without having to make a whole new account. Later on I decided to make a new Windows account to be used on my W8 PC and all the services I use there (calendar, SkyDrive, etc.) so as to keep it separate from the spam-riddled account I made back when I was like 12. I then thought, hey, why don't I just cancel my alias on my Hotmail account and use that name for my new Microsoft account? Not possible. Make a new Microsoft account, then transfer my alias? Not possible. Ugh. Support should be able to make this happen. What conceivable security concern can there be that forces a 30 day timeout for someone who can provide proof of ownership of both accounts?

But hey, the world lives on and in the end it's not that big a deal. I released the alias from my Hotmail and set up a calendar appointment to reuse it on my new Outlook account when the 30 days are up. If someone snatches it in that short time window then oh well.