Need Lumia 920 factory reset - what are the effects?

[wozburger]

Hi

My wife recently bought (well, won, actually...) a Lumia 920 and at the AT&T store she used her existing MS account to set it up. On the way home she discovered that the Xbox music & video store was giving everything in GB pounds rather than $.

Didn't think about it when setting up, but this is down to the fact that the account was set up several years ago when she was in the UK and was using our xbox. We contacted MS helpline, but they had no idea how to change this or even whether it is possible (and didn't even seem to recognise the problem). It seems crazy that MS has no consistent/relatively easy way of moving the account between countries, but there's nothing we can apparently do about it

Anyway, I guess we now need to factory reset her phone and set up a new MS account for it (she doesn't care about the gaming side and hasn't bought any music/movies yet, so it's not that much of a big deal).

My question is if we do this, after backing up photos etc, what are the effects of a factory reset? I assume she'll also lose messages & contacts. Do we need to go back to AT&T or can we just set it up with the new MS account?

Also, can you set up the new account from the phone or does it already need to exist?

Thanks

EDIT: in case it matters, she also has a Win8 PC tied to this same account, which we'll also need to change!

 

[Genserik]

If you have her contacts backed up through the original Windows Live account you should be able to export and import them into the new one all online.

Everything else...I would assume it is lost.

Some of the cell phone stores have a machine that they can use to offload contacts from - but I recommend the aforementioned homebrewed solution. Export the contacts in your existing Windows Live account, create a new one, then import them. When you setup the phone it will have you login and should be able to sync your contacts.

I am in the middle of a reset now as we speak...it's taking several minutes.

 

[wozburger]

Thanks Genserik!

Hope your reset went without too many problems!

 

[filmboy6x6]

I've done it three times now. It will bring everything back, texts,apps, contacts. You will have to put email and wifi passwords back manually and you will have to rearrange your home screen. You will have to put music back also.

M>

 

[gfunk84]

I've done it three times now. It will bring everything back, texts,apps, contacts. You will have to put email and wifi passwords back manually and you will have to rearrange your home screen. You will have to put music back also.

M>

Aren't the backups for text history, etc. specific to the Microsoft account used to set up the phone? i.e. when you reset and use another Microsoft account, how will it find the backups to restore?

You can apparently request a country change now but it can take up to 6 weeks.