14 DAY TRIAL // If you're one of the millions of Instagram users who own an Outlook.com account, you might have noticed that password reset emails do not arrive in your inbox, no matter how many times you're actually resending the message.
We first reported this problem in November 2013, and since then, Microsoft has looked into the issue several times, but no clear workaround has been provided.
Microsoft's Community forums are full of complaints coming from Outlook.com users who can't do anything to reset the Instagram account password, despite a number of workarounds suggested by Redmond's support engineers.
Basically, Microsoft recommends users to look into the junk folder before anything else and if the message still doesn't show up, to add the Instagram email to the safe senders list. This should prevent future emails from getting blocked, so you should then resend the password reset confirmation to your inbox.
And still, nothing seems to work, which obviously caused frustration among Outlook.com users. Here's what one of the affected users tried, to no avail:
“I did follow the step, Checked the Junk mail but no, I’ve added instagram email into my safe senders list, its not inside my blocked sender list also, I’ve checked my Junk mail setting. I even tried forward my hotmail to another new hotmail account that I registered recently, but it did not work. I tried forward to my Gmail account it did not work also. However, I tried email to myself it did forward to the both new email. I can receive emails from my friends and other people.”
That surely doesn't sit well with users who were already disappointed with Microsoft's decision to retire Hotmail and move all accounts to Outlook.com. The company decided last year to completely kill Hotmail and transfer everyone to Outlook automatically.
Outlook.com is Microsoft's revamped email platform that's based on the popular Hotmail service, but comes with a number of improvements, including OneDrive integration, Skype chat support, and a number of other features that bring it in line with some other modern Microsoft products.
At the same time, Redmond is also using Outlook.com as a key weapon in the fight against long-time rival Google and its very own Gmail, saying that the email platform has been designed in such a way that users' privacy is fully protected and no script is looking into their messages in order to provide ads. Gmail does it, Microsoft says as part of its Scroogled campaign.