One of the more common questions I get is how to close a Hotmail account (or an account, or an MSN account, and so on). If you had an account under any of those names, it’s now a Microsoft account.
Windows Live – essentially a rebranding of the MSN name, focusing on those online services, and at the same time providing some integration with Windows itself. MSN evolved into a family of online services and content sites, once again with a single login using your Microsoft-provided email address. MSN – the MicroSoft Network – was originally a service providing internet connectivity. Microsoft Passport – an attempt to create an internet-wide single log-in using your Microsoft email address. In fact, Microsoft accounts have existed in one form or another for a long time, by various names. Microsoft has long struggled to encourage users to have a single account with which to access multiple online services. Just go to a Microsoft online service like, sign out, and then begin the new-account creation process as if you didn’t already have one.Ĭreating a new account is, in fact, creating a new Microsoft account, which happens to use email addresses ending in “” as your login ID. You can have more than one if you like – perhaps to keep some services separate from others – or to keep your Windows login separate from your online identity. Since Windows 8, you can also use it as your Windows login 1. The short version is this: it’s a single account you use to access any and all Microsoft services. Now that you know you have one, what is it? :-) Over more than twenty years, Microsoft has offered a number of services that involved using an email address they provided. What that means is that almost any email address ever provided to you by Microsoft is, already, a Microsoft account. If you have an email address that can be used to log in to, that’s a Microsoft account. 
That’s where people are getting confused. Your Hotmail account already is a Microsoft account – as are many, many other accounts. They needed a term for a more general concept.
I’ve long held that Microsoft just doesn’t do product names well, but in this case, they had no choice. Microsoft introduced it around the time of Windows 8 with the arrival of Windows 10, they’re pushing the concept even harder. Many people are confused by the concept of a “Microsoft account”.
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