Inspired by this question, but without all the clutter about bad coding practices.
On Windows 8 and later systems, you can log in using three types of accounts:
- Local user account
- Domain user account
- Microsoft account
Let's say you need to gain access to the user profile of an user which is not currently available and/or doesn't want do give you his/her password; let's assume you have full administrative access to the computer using another account, but being able to access the user's files is not enough: you need to actually log in as the missing user (for whatever reason).
In the first two cases, you can perform a password reset if you have proper admin rights (local or domain).
But what to do if the user has been using a Microsoft account?
And no, "call Microsoft and ask them for a password reset" is not an option, even if you have the legal rights to do so; you need to access the user's data on this computer, without impacting whatever online services or other computers he/she also uses.