Password Requirements

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

Topic last modified: 2012-02-24

The following rules and restrictions apply to account passwords.

Rules

• The password can have a maximum length of 16 characters.
  
• Strong passwords are at least 8 characters long.
  
• The password is case-sensitive.
  
• The password can contain uppercase and lowercase letters, and numbers.
  
• The password can contain the following ASCII text characters: ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + - = { } | [ ] \ : " ; ' < > ? , . /
  

Restrictions

The password can't contain:

• Spaces
  
• Non-English characters
  
• The alias part of the email address. For example, if the email address is user@contoso.edu, the password can't contain user. This restriction isn't case-sensitive, so USER or User can't be used in the password for user@contoso.edu.
  

Also, for Microsoft Live@edu, the password mustn't contain the secret answer for the Windows Live security question and the secret answer mustn'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.