How do I link my offline account to a pre-existing Xbox live account

There is no way to merge accounts. You would need to join live with your offline account and sign into it on the One in order to use it.

I have this same issue. I have:

a) an Xbox which has never been online and ...

b) a pre-existing MS account (which has never been associated with an Xbox account).

(I know they're all merged now, but I'm using the names 'Xbox' vs. 'MS' for clarity). Am I to understand the steps to merge them are as follows:

1. On my acutal XBox device, I make the offline Xbox account into Online Xbox Live account (using the gamertag I want)

2. Somewhere (don't know where), I change the MS account associated with my newly-created gamertag/Xbox account to my pre-existing MS account.

Does this sound right? Where is step 2 done? On my Xbox or on my desktop? I read the following link, but it's not exactly the situation described here:

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

Of course, it would be ideal if an offline account could just be directly linked to a pre-exisiting MS account.

Hi there,

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No, you can't merge a local profile with an already existing Xbox Live account, it is only possible to 'upgrade' that local profile to a new Xbox Live account. If you want to do that see the steps on this link:

support.xbox.com/.../offline-profile-to-gamertag

Hi, I don't believe the is a way to link an offline account to an existing Xbox live account. You may be able to convert the offline profile to an online one but you would need to create a new account at that time.

That’s outrageous. How do I create a separate account for a pre existing account ie my daughters account . Do I have to start from scratch for her?