When you as an administrator can’t remember your password to sign in to Office 365, you click on the Can’t access your account link in order to attempt to reset your own password. This takes you to the Reset your password form. Once here, you start the process to reset your password, however, during the process you see the following message…
We could not verify your account
To protect your account, we need to contact the mobile phone associated with your account before you can use this site to reset your password. Unfortunately, recent attempts to contact you at this number were not successful.
If you'd like, we can contact another administratorin your organization to reset your password for you.
If this option doesn't work for you, please contact Support.
Or, you don't even get an email to confirm your password reset request.
You then ask the following question, why can’t I reset my password? I will tell you how you got in to this situation and how to resolve.
Your user account was probably synchronized from your Active Directory or was created using Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell. Or, your just simply missing a phone number or email address. When using these tools, the usage location and email is not set. You can resolve this by doing the following steps…
Step 1: Set your usage location
You can work with another admin to set your user location. Or, once you are able to sign in, please set your user location within the Office 365 portal.
1. Sign in to the Office 365 portal.
2. Go to users or users and groups, find and edit the admin account.
3. Go to settings.
4. Under Set user location, select the region the admin is located in.
Alternatively, you can use the Set-MsolUser cmdlet with the UsageLocation parameter to set the user location.
Step 2: Fill in Mobile phone number
You can work with another admin to set your mobile phone number. Or, once you are able to sign in, please update your mobile phone number within your cloud service portal.
The following is the expected phone number format.
For example…
+1 123 555-4567
Step 3: Fill in your alternate email address
You can work with another admin to set your user location. Or, once you are able to sign in, please set your user location within the Office 365 portal.
1. Sign in to the Office 365 portal.
2. Go to users or users and groups, find and edit the admin account.
3. Go to settings.
4. Fill in the Alternate email address. (Do not use your Office 365 email address)
Alternatively, you can use the Set-MsolUser cmdlet with the AlternateEmailAddresses parameter to set the alternate email address for the user.