Windows 10: retrieve wife's MS account which seems to have disappeared from user accounts

Configuring Wife's Win 10 home Samsung laptop so our grandchildren can use it for home lessons in lock down. Have removed all wifes files to a usb stick and have been creating user profiles for grandchildren but in the process I seem to have lost wife's user account. I had one as well on laptop but do not remember my password amd do not have a reset on usb stick How can I retrieve or restore wifes: user account as i think it is linke to several programmes we need to retain?

:)

 

Change Microsoft Account Details in Administrator Account


Hi Daryl, welcome to the Ten Forums.

It's quite easy in fact, simply switch the account in question first to a local account, then switch back to a Microsoft account, this time using your wife's MS account credentials.

Tutorials:

• Step 1: Local Account - Switch to in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
• Step 2: Microsoft Account - Switch to in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Notice that before doing this you need to remove the new additional MS account on the PC, the one you created with her credentials. Windows allows only one user account for each email address, if the new account exists you cannot switch the original administrator account to an MS account using the same email address. Tutorial: User Account - Delete in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

Change Microsoft Account Details in Administrator Account


Strange.

It looks as if the best alternative would be as follows, subject to me understanding you correctly that you only want one user account and that should be an MS account with your wife's email address:

• Create a user account to your wife with her MS account email
• Copy the data from C:\Users\Your_Original_Account to the new account of your wife's (Documents to Documents, Pictures to Pictures and so on)
• Make your wife's account an administrator account
• Delete your original account

 

Local Acct user and MS account user - sync them or merge them

If the local account is the one where you have most of your personal data, this is how I would do it:

• Sign in to your Microsoft account
  
• Copy all documents, pictures and other personal data from Microsoft account's user folders to corresponding folders in user Public (contents of MS account Documents folder to Public Documents folder and so on)
• Sign out from Microsoft account

Notice that above steps are only required if Microsoft account user folders contain data you want to keep. If its user folders are empty or do not contain anything worth saving, you can skip the above steps. Continue from below.

• Sign in to the local account
  
• Delete the Microsoft account (Option One in this tutorial)
• Switch your local account to a Microsoft account (tutorial)
• Copy the data backed up from old Microsoft account to Public folders to new Microsoft account in corresponding folders

That's it. Using the Public folders as temporary storage you will have none whatsoever file owner / permission issues later on.