<p>Back when Microsoft launched the email service outlook.com publicly it shipped with a feature to rename your Microsoft / Windows Live account. I unknowingly did so at that time and switched from a custom email address to an outlook.com address. Microsoft quickly removed the feature again from its website, reportedly because it was causing issues for users who did rename their accounts. Some users reported that they were unable to access old emails, files they hosted on SkyDrive and other data that was available under the old account.</p><p>Microsoft seems to have resolved those issues as the account renaming functionality has been re-enabled in the Microsoft account control panel.</p><p>Before we look at that in detail, I'd like to spend a paragraph listing some of the reasons why you may want to rename your email address. The most obvious reason in my opinion is the selection of a new username. Maybe you want to change your old username to a different one because you find it no longer appropriate and do not want to use it anymore when you are sending emails.</p><p>Another reason may be that you want to switch to a different address away from one of the domain names that Microsoft is making available (outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com and maybe local domains like hotmail.de).</p><p><a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2013/03/30/how-to-rename-your-microsoft-account/">Keep reading...</a></p>