If you cannot login to your old Instagram account, you have options. If you know what email address you used, you could try to resurrect it. If you remember a username instead, you can get login help from Instagram themselves. If you don’t remember anything, you may need to start again.
Instagram is awesome and seems to be going from strength to strength. With competitors biting at its heels, the social network has had to embrace innovation to remain different and interesting in a world where choice is plenty.
I run five Instagram accounts. One for myself and four for clients of mine. I have them all logged in at the same time on my phone and switch between them as I need to. It’s a neat feature that that means I don’t have to use a third-party tool to manage multiple accounts like I do for Twitter or Facebook.
Managing all of those accounts can become tricky, especially on hot news days. I record usernames and passwords in two different places just in case I get logged out. One on my phone so I always have access and one set on OneDrive so I can get to them from anywhere.
I realize that not everybody does that, which is what this tutorial is all about. What to do if you cannot login to your old Instagram account through forgetting your password or forgetting everything.
Forgot your Instagram password
Passwords are the bane of modern life. We need them for everything but cannot use the same one for multiple accounts otherwise we compromise each of them. Until something better comes along, we need password managers or a good memory. When the latter lets you down, password reminders come into their own.
Instagram has one.
- Open the Instagram app on your device.
- Select Get help signing in just below the login screen.
- Select Use Username or Email, Send an SMS or Log In with Facebook if you use Android.
- Select Username or Phone if you use iOS.
- Select Send Login Link.
Instagram will then send a link to your email address or phone as an SMS for you to reset your password. You will then need to verify the account through the link and generate a new password. You will then need to log into Instagram using that new password.
Forgot your entire Instagram login
If you have forgotten your entire Instagram login you can either try to get help from Instagram themselves or create a new account. Much depends on how much content you have and whether you can get your friends to link to your new account.
While Instagram cannot do much for you if you have forgotten your email, username and password, they do at least try.
If you forget your username, you can use your email address instead. If you cannot remember your email address or username, you are a bit stuck. You will need one or the other to identify your account for Instagram to help you or to trigger a password reminder.
You do have one option left, which is to reset Instagram using Facebook.
Login to your Instagram account using Facebook
Because social networks love to share information and harvest lots of personal data, they like to link to each other in any way they can. As some networks own others, the option is sometimes default. If you need to log into your Instagram account but don’t have the password, you can elect to log in using a linked Facebook account.
I have not tried this method myself but have been assured that it works.
- Open the Instagram app and select Forgot password.
- Select Reset Using Facebook.
- Sign into Facebook if you aren’t already.
- Select the Reset prompt that appears in the Facebook app.
- Enter a new password into the box and select Done.
- Log into Instagram using that new password.
This obviously only works if you have linked Facebook with Instagram. This will not prompt for a new username and only works on passwords. If you have forgotten all your details, you may have to create another Instagram account and be done with it.
As far as I can tell, Instagram does not delete old accounts so even if you do set up a new account, if you find the login details for your old one, it should still be there when you log back in. This may change in time though but is true for now.
Know of any other ways to login to your old Instagram account when you have forgotten the details? Tell us about them below if you do!
