Setup a Microsoft Account on Windows 8
Edited by Grimm, MsBarbs, Dougie
Hi, you are watching VisiHow and today we are going to teach you how to set up your own Microsoft account on your Windows 8 computer. You can also set up a Microsoft account without a Windows computer; however, this is going to focus on the steps necessary to take with your Windows computer.
Steps
- 1The first thing we are going to do is to press the 'Windows key', which is the button next to your space bar.
- 2One press of that brings up our Windows tile menu.
- 3We are going to go down and click on 'settings'.
- 4If you do not have the 'PC settings', or the gear icon, you can also click up on search in the upper right-hand corner and you can type in 'settings'.
- 5It is the same no matter which one you click.There we have 'PC settings' pops up there that is the first one, so we will go ahead and click that.
- 6This will open up the PC settings window.Click on 'PC settings'.
- 7You will notice we have our customized lock screen, and our customized account picture here. We have not set up a picture password yet. We will get to that in another video on picture passwords. Anyway, back to our Microsoft account. We are going to click on 'accounts'. This is under the PC settings options. We are going to click on accounts and this will open the accounts window.For those of you who have watched the earlier tutorials.
- 8What we are interested in doing specifically is connecting to a Microsoft account. We are going to click on that. You will notice that my mouse pointer does not change; however, this is a clickable link, so click on 'connect to a Microsoft account'.We have the option to choose from our accounts, sign in options, and other accounts.
- 9"Please wait".
- 10Now, if you already have a Microsoft account you can sign in, enter in your email here in the email field, enter in the password, and select next.Sign into your Microsoft account.
- 11So "don't have an account?" 'Create a new account'. We will create a new account.However, we are going to be setting up a new account.
- 12If you are interested in the privacy statement, you are going to want click on 'privacy statement'.
- 13However, as stated, we are simply going to create a new account.
- 14Now we have clicked on 'create a new account', and here we are first name, last name, email address, we can set up our own email address at Outlook.com or Hotmail.com.
- 15This means you can use your existing email address and you don't need to change anything. Again, use our favorite email, which gives us a Microsoft account, or get your own one.Alternatively, we can use our favorite email address.
- 16"Passwords must have eight characters and two of the following: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols". Symbols are things like exclamation points, periods, and the ampersand sign, dollar signs. You need two of them, two different ones.We will go ahead and create passwords when we get down to that section.
- 17Honestly, we always recommend selecting the United States unless you're in a nether recognized country where everything is easy, like the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, France, Spain, Canada, and much of Europe.'Country/Region', you are going to select the country or region where you're from.
- 18Things in the United States and Canada are very different than things in for example Mexico are, especially if you use Xbox live, or services like that. You will notice this.However, you will notice on the list we have the United States and then you can scroll up to Canada, but that's all North America.
- 19VisiHow second name: how email address:, why of course that is going to be, VisiHow@Outlook.com. Create a password, password is created and United States.At any rate, first name:
- 20'United States', as I said earlier, that's what country we want to choose.
- 21Now we are going to click on 'next'.
- 22'Phone number', 'country code', state an 'alternative email address', there we go, "of the two options you have to give us one". So, let's pick an alternate email address info@VisiHow.com. That's pretty easy, right?'Select a Birthday', Let's make this something relatively easy to remember 1979, 'gender'- not specified, VisiHow is a none gender creature.
- 23As you can see, we can get a message sent there. If we can't remember the password that's fine that's fine. "You can get a message sent to this email address to help you reset your password in case you can't sign in", so let's go ahead and click next.Now are going to go ahead and click on 'next'.
- 24Which is a test that basically confirms if you are a real person or a computer, however, these days, computers can often pass them. I see Y5Q56D, I don't know if it is case sensitive but hopefully it's not.Now we have a captcha.
- 25"Enhance my online experiences by letting Microsoft advertising use my account information", No.
- 26Thank you."Send me promotional offers from Microsoft", No, I get enough spam already.
- 27If you are on this page, you can click on the Microsoft services agreement that will open a window and let you read about that. You could also click on the privacy in cookie statement. However, it is my personal opinion that neither of these items matter because if you disagree with them, it means that you are not going to click next and you cannot use the service."Clicking next means that you agree to the Microsoft services agreement and privacy in cookie statement".
- 28So click 'next', because I need to use the service.
- 29(If you sign infrequently on this device we won't ask you to verify after this)". "How would you like to get this code?" Email. Thanks. "To verify that this is your email address, enter it below and click next". Okay, so let's enter in our email address and we are going to go ahead and click 'next', at which point we will receive a code.Help us protect you, "Accessing sensitive information from your account or device, or if we detect suspicious account activity, we will ask for a security code to verify your identity.
- 30Okay, so now we need a code. Let's open our email real quick. I'm going to step away from the screen, open the email, and I will be right back. Okay, we are back. Interestingly enough I did not immediately receive the code. I'm going to paste that code in. I received that code. It did take me a couple minutes to receive the code and I was a bit surprised by that. However, I guess sometimes these things take time, even if it is Microsoft or Google doing the sending.Okay, "if (your email address) matches the email address on your account, we will send you a code".
- 31You are going to click on 'next' to confirm our code.
- 32We have to wait, "please wait", which is something, unfortunately, you get to see a lot with Windows.
- 33That way you can get to them from any device, even if something happens to your PC". Okay, so basically what this means in simple terms, is that if you load up some pictures Here we see the photos, documents, or your computer settings, All of these will be saved into the cloud. Now if that is a bit confusing for you in simple terms it means that if your computer dies, for lack of a better term, and you need to get a new computer, As long as you get a Windows computer, When you sign in to Microsoft, They will ask you if you would like to synchronize your cloud settings. and all of your documents, pictures and everything else that you had before, On the other PC, will be available from the cloud. This is a very convenient and helpful setting, unless you are doing things you do not want other people to see in which case you probably do not want done.Okay, "OneDrive is your cloud storage, your camera roll, PC settings will automatically be backed up to the cloud, and new documents you create will automatically be saved to OneDrive by default.
- 34I use this I love it so I'm going to click 'next'.
- 35Now I'm going to change my existing account to a Microsoft account, this isn't going to change anything other than my files, but what is going to allow me to do is to recover my password should I lose that password.So "switch to a Microsoft account on this PC".
- 36So let us 'switch' that.
- 37I hope that those of you watching this video are not going to send me spam. That is probably going to happen.This may take a minute while it prepares the account, which is fine with me.
- 38My account is now connected.
- 39I have my Microsoft account set up and if I want to go get more account settings I can jump right here to the 'more account settings online', but that is another video, which you will have to click the link to visit otherwise.
- 40I hope that we have been able to help you today, and we will look forward to seeing you in our next video. Any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave us a note in the comment section or ask a question. If you like this, remember give us a Facebook like, a share, a tweet or whatever it is that floats your boat, and we look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you very much.Thank you very much for using VisiHow.
Video: Setup a Microsoft Account on Windows 8
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Categories : Windows
Recent edits by: MsBarbs, Grimm
