How do I claim a gamertag that I know has been inactive for 5 years and meets all the...

Hi Patrick! I'm Rostom, an Independent Advisor. I will be glad to help you here.

The gamertag system is being managed alone by their system. If it does not allow us to claim our preferred gamertags, I am afraid our best option is to wait and keep trying until it becomes available or choose a new combination instead. It may not be active but the system hasn't recycled it yet. We do not have any official information here when will the Xbox team recycle old gamertags.

you don't, it may look inactive but still linked to an active microsoft account, i have a tag that has zero gamerscore and has not been used for xbox for a very very long time, but i use the microsoft account for other services on microsoft, therefore it will never get reset.

There's a gamertag that I want however it has been taken but I know that it hasn't been active for over the five year mark so how would I go about aquiring it?

As Tezzerrific states theres no way to truly know if its an inactive account. If the person simply signs into the Microsoft account associated with their Xbox account periodically to check their email for instance then that would be enough to consider the account "active" and make it so their gamertag is never released.

probably an inactive profile has it. But you'll have to wait until the next gamertag "recycle" to claim that gamertag. Usually they are done every 5 years.

Thanks, just needed to know.

Hello,

Microsoft has stated previously that an account must be inactive for a minimum of 2 years before being designated as inactive. After that period, the gamertag can be reclaimed by a new account. Before then, there is no way to claim the gamertag if it is
linked to an account that has not been inactive for two years.

I hope this helps and sorry for the inconvenience.