How to delete your Microsoft account permanently

By Otabek Mamadaliev · Sources last reviewed 24 August 2026 · What this means

This is not one account — it is Outlook, OneDrive, Xbox, Office and Skype. Your Xbox gamertag, achievements and entire digital game library are tied to it, as are any Office licences and every file in OneDrive.

You choose your own grace period

Microsoft lets you pick a 30-day or 60-day re-open window during the closure flow — one of the few platforms that hands you the choice. Pick 60 unless you have a reason not to; there is no advantage to the shorter one.

Microsoft holds your data throughout that period, so nothing is lost if you change your mind. Sign back in to reopen. Once the window passes, the account and its data are permanently deleted.

Separately: if you have recently reset all of your sign-in verification details, Microsoft makes you wait 60 days before you can close the account at all — an anti-hijacking measure.

Before you close

• Download OneDrive files and verify they opened.
• Spend your Microsoft account balance and any gift cards — forfeited otherwise.
• Cancel Microsoft 365 and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.
• Check what uses this email to sign in elsewhere.
• Xbox: your gamertag, achievements and purchased games go. There is no transfer.

Close the account

You must be able to sign in. If you cannot, use Microsoft's Sign-in helper first — there is no closing an account you cannot access.

1. Go to account.microsoft.com and sign in, verifying if prompted.
2. Read the list of what closure affects and tick each checkbox to acknowledge it.
3. Choose your re-open window: 30 or 60 days.
4. Select a reason from the drop-down.
5. Click Mark account for closure.

The email address is the part that breaks everything else

If this account is an @outlook.com, @hotmail.com or @live.com address, closing it destroys the mailbox — and with it, the password-reset route for every other service you signed up to using that address.

That is the failure people discover months later, locked out of a bank, a utility or a shopping account they had forgotten used the old email. Before you close:

1. Search the mailbox for "welcome", "verify your email" and "reset your password" to build a list of what actually uses it. It will be longer than you expect.
2. Change the email on each of those services to an address you are keeping, and confirm the change went through.
3. Update recovery addresses anywhere this one is listed as the backup, including on other people's accounts if you are their recovery contact.
4. Export the mail itself if there is anything in it worth keeping — years of correspondence go with the account.
5. Then close, and use the 60-day window as a monitoring period rather than a countdown.

The address is not recycled for someone else to take, which removes one risk. It also means anything still sending to it simply fails silently, which is why the audit has to happen before rather than after.

Work and school accounts are not yours to close

A Microsoft account issued by an employer or a university is managed by that organisation. It does not have a close-account option for you, and the data in it belongs to them.

The confusion worth avoiding is that a personal Microsoft account and a work account can share an email address in some configurations, and people sign into the wrong one. Check which you are looking at on account.microsoft.com before you tick anything — the closure screen lists what will be affected, and reading that list is the cheapest safety check available.

Use the waiting period as a test

The 30 or 60 days are usually treated as a countdown to endure. They are more useful as a trial run, and this is the one platform on this site that hands you a proper one.

1. Mark the account for closure and pick the 60-day window.
2. Carry on with life and notice what breaks — a login that will not work, a device asking to sign in, mail you were expecting that never arrives.
3. If something important surfaces, sign back in. The account reopens intact and you have lost nothing but the time.
4. If nothing surfaces, let the window run out having actually verified it was safe rather than assuming.

The only thing that spoils this is Windows itself. If you sign into a PC with this account, that machine will keep prompting throughout, so switch it to a local account or a different Microsoft account before you start.

Steps checked against Microsoft’s “How to close your Microsoft account” article.