Your password expired, or you need to change it

Changing your password is straightforward. What catches people out is everything that was still using the old one — your phone’s mail app, a tablet at home, Outlook on a second computer. Those keep retrying in the background and can lock the account within minutes.

Do it in this order and you will avoid that entirely.

The safe order to change your password

1. Change it at your desk, on the office network, on a normal work day. Not last thing on a Friday, and not from a hotel. If something goes sideways you want us reachable.
2. Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete on your Windows computer, then choose Change a password. Enter the old one, then the new one twice. Doing it here means Windows and Microsoft 365 stay in step.
3. Give it two or three minutes before you touch anything else. The change has to sync out to Microsoft.
4. Now fix every other device, one at a time. See the checklist below.
5. Lock and unlock your computer with the new password to confirm it took.

If you cannot reach a work computer, change it at portal.office.com instead — click your initials or photo in the top right, then View account › Password.

Choosing a password that will not fight you

• Longer beats complicated. Four unrelated words with a number and a symbol — something like copper-lantern-42-Tuesday — is far stronger than P@ssw0rd7 and much easier to type on a phone.
• Do not recycle a personal password. If a shopping site you used in 2019 gets breached, that password is public now, and attackers try it against work email first.
• Do not just increment. Going from Summer2025! to Summer2026! is the first thing anyone guesses.
• Never write it on a note under the keyboard. If you need somewhere to keep it, ask us about the password manager — that is a genuinely good solution and we will help you set it up.

The device checklist

Work through anything that touches your work email or files:

• Mobile phone mail app — it will usually prompt on its own within a few minutes. If it does not, open the account settings and re-enter the password.
• Tablet or home computer with Outlook or Teams installed.
• Yealink desk phone — no action needed. Your desk phone does not use your Microsoft password.
• Any shared or reception computer you sign into.
• Printers with scan-to-email set up under your account — tell us, because those need updating from our side.

If the account locks anyway

You will see something like your account has been locked out or repeated password prompts that reject the correct password.

1. Turn off Wi-Fi and mobile data on your phone. This stops the device that is almost certainly causing it.
2. Wait 15 minutes. Most lockouts clear themselves automatically in that window.
3. Sign in on your computer with the new password.
4. Turn your phone back on and re-enter the password there when it prompts.

If it locks again within the hour, something is still holding the old password and we need to find it. That is a call, not a wait.

Common snags

“It says my new password doesn’t meet requirements.” It needs to be at least the minimum length, cannot repeat your recent passwords, and cannot contain your name or username. Add a couple more words rather than more symbols.

“Outlook keeps asking for a password and won’t accept it.” Close Outlook completely, sign out of Windows, sign back in, then reopen Outlook. If it still loops, that is a stored credential problem — see the Outlook article, or call us.

“I changed it but my old password still works.” It can take a few minutes to propagate. If the old one still works after an hour, tell us.

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Something not lining up? Call 440-991-9980 or email support@iconiumnetworks.com. If you are locked out and cannot get to email, please phone — we would rather spend two minutes on the line than have you locked out all afternoon.