Reset your password

You can, and should, regularly change your password to keep hackers at bay (see how to change your Yahoo password). But when you have forgotten your password, you'll need to go through the "password reset" process, which uses alternate email addresses or secret answer/question to restore access to your profile and emails. You can also use this process if you forgot your username (which comes before the "@" symbol in your Yahoo email address), or if a hacker has gained access to your account.

Tip: when you try to login to your Yahoo account, you can omit the domain name (the part that comes after the "@" symbol). But this only works when the Yahoo page's address matches the end of your email address, for example: if you have an "@yahoo.co.uk" email account and only enter your username on a "yahoo.com" page, Yahoo will assume that your address ends in "yahoo.com"!

Get a new password for your Yahoo account

Go login to your Yahoo account / Yahoo Mail account as you usually do, and don't try too many times entering a guessed password, to avoid having your account locked.

• Instead, click on the "I can't access my account" link at the bottom of the sign in form:
  
  
• The next screen offers three options:
  • "I have a problem with my password" - this is the choice to make when you cannot remember your password, and it is selected by default. Click Next to continue.
  
  • FYI: "I forgot my Yahoo! ID" lets you recover your username, which is the portion of your email address that comes before "@yahoo.com", "@yahoo.co.uk", etc.
  
  • FYI: "My account may have been compromised" lets you often regain access to your account after it has been hacked by someone else (typically to send spam on your behalf).
• In the next page, type your full yahoo email address in the first text field: your username, the "@" symbol, and the domain name: this could be "yahoo.com", a localized version of it like "yahoo.co.uk" or "yahoo.ca", or the alternate domains "ymail.com" and "rocketmail.com".
  
  
• Note: if you keep receiving the "If you have trouble reading the code shown above, you can click 'Try a new code' to see a different code, or you can select an audio code instead" error message, clicking "Audio code" will give you a spoken version of a captcha code; clicking the "Try a new code" link will load a new image with words to match.
• Click Next.
• On the "How do you want to reset your password?" page, Yahoo will show you a list of email addresses associated with your Yahoo account. To have a password reset link sent to you, select an email address and click Next. To use your security question and secret answer, select the last option and click Next. We'll go the email address route for this tutorial.
• Check your other email account's inbox (check your spam folder if you haven't received anything within a minute or two), and click on the "Reset My Password" link in the message.
• Enter a new password in the web page that opened; Yahoo will tell you how safe your password is as you type it inside the first text box. For a safer password, use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters (note: your password is case-sensitive, so remember which letters are capitalized or not). Also includes numbers and punctuation marks or symbols (underscore "_", hyphen "-", question mark, etc.) The more "weird" your password is, the harder it is for anyone else to guess! Click Next.
  
  
• You will now see a blank login form: enter your Yahoo ID and new password, and click Sign in.
• Yahoo will show you a "You have successfully reset your password" confirmation screen, also warning you that your credentials have been reset for Yahoo Mail for Android (and Kindle Fire), Flickr (this photo sharing site belongs to Yahoo), and Zimbra Desktop. Don't worry about this message if you don't use any of these services / applications, and click Continue.

If your web browser automatically "remembers" your passwords, you will need to enter once, manually, your new Yahoo information to update its records and avoid error messages.