Password Guidelines

  • Article

Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Live@edu

The following rules and restrictions apply to account passwords.

  • Password rules

    • The password can have a maximum length of 16 characters.
    • The password is case-sensitive.
    • The password can contain uppercase letters and lowercase letters.
    • The password can contain numbers.
    • The password can contain the following ASCII text characters: ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + - = { } | [ ] \ : " ; ' < > ? , . /

  • Password restrictions
    The password can't contain any of the following items:

    • Spaces
    • Non-English characters
    • The account name part of the e-mail address. For example, if the e-mail address is user@contoso.com, the password can't contain user. This restriction isn't case-sensitive. Therefore, USER or User can't be used in the password for user@contoso.com.

    Also, for Microsoft Live@edu, the password can’t contain the secret answer for the Windows Live security question, and the secret answer can’t contain the password. The Windows Live security question and secret answer are used to verify a user’s identity if the user forgets their password and tries to reset it.