Dead Xbox gamertag associated with still active email

Est Artemis · Apr 28, 2021

There's a certain gamertag I've been wanting to obtain that I noticed hasn't been active (at least from what I can tell) since xbox 360 since the only achievements they have are for xbox 360 games. I thought that with the new policy put in place a gamertag was supposed to be available after 2 years of inactivity. I further did some digging to see that the account email may potentially still be in use, causing the account to stay "active". It's a bit frustrating since the actual xbox account name is simply sitting unused and probably will be until the end of time if that's the case since there's a decent chance that person forgot about the account altogether. Is there absolutely no way to make the gamertag available? Thanks in advance for any help with this problem.

:)

[EX]

... and btw it's 2 years for accounts that have never made any purchases or subs otherwise it is 5 years.

Smwutches

No. Even if they're not active on an Xbox, they may be active elsewhere so the tag won't be freed up.

Darhyl Amizola

Hi Jake! I'm more than happy to help you!

Since you have mentioned that you have been using this account and can't make any changes to it, I just want to clarify if you do have access to this account?

If no, the only option to recover a Microsoft account is through the account recovery webform:

https://account.live.com/acsr

If you're unable to recover the account through the ACSR or password reset, I'm afraid it is no longer possible to access the account.

If you're able to recover the account, (Just in case the old school email was accessed after ACSR) you can switch the email address alias of your old school email as primary and switch it as secondary by adding a new email address alias on your account. Here's how:

Add a new email address on your Microsoft account on account.microsoft.com > Your Info > manage how you sign in > then add the alias.

Note: Make sure that the new email address is not associated with any Microsoft account.

Then switch the new email alias making it as a primary alias and your old school email will be the secondary alias.

Note: This change is only for sign-in preferences. Please do not remove your old school email from your account as this may cause permanent deletion of your files or saved data progress. Remain it as your secondary alias.

Thank you for your kindness and understanding! Please feel free to let me know if you need anything else.

Best Regards,
Darhyl

Njal the Blue

Whilst it might not be used currently on Xbox, it is highly likely that the account is still active elsewhere within Microsoft for example office, skype, or outlook. As long as that Microsoft account is active, that gamertag will stay associated
to it.

DigitalAssassin

Hey there, as long as you can still sign-in one of the gamertags on the Xbox you should be able to change the email associated with the account following the steps here:

support.xbox.com/.../switch-gamertag-to-different-microsoft-account

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If you associate the randomly generated gamertags with another email their original gamertag should show up under their original email.

Dead Xbox gamertag associated with still active email