How to protect your Microsoft Ads account while you are alive
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Microsoft Ads account. While the account holder is alive, Microsoft allows authorized users.
Microsoft decides requests about a Microsoft Ads account after a death case by case, so nothing in its terms promises a survivor anything; what the account holder sets up in advance is what holds. There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Microsoft Ads account. While the account holder is alive, Microsoft allows authorized users.
How to protect your Microsoft Ads accounts
Naming who acts after a death
- Designation
There is no beneficiary designation on a Microsoft Advertising account, and Microsoft offers no legacy-contact feature at the Microsoft account level.1
What Microsoft Corporation's terms say about sharing and transfers3
- Transferring the account or registration
A Microsoft Advertising account is not signed over to another person: the Agreement bars assigning it without Microsoft's consent.2
- Authorized users and delegates
The account owner can invite other people and give each one of four roles, Super, Standard, Campaign or Viewer, which determines what each can do. Super is the role for "Account owners and administrators," covering users, account settings, billing, campaigns and account-level operations.3
Standard users manage day-to-day activity with limited user and billing rights and complete billing tasks "only when a valid payment method is available"; Campaign users manage campaigns without account administration, and Viewer users can see but not change anything.3
- Workspace roles and admin access
Every Microsoft Advertising account sits inside a manager account, where users, user roles and payment methods are shared across the accounts beneath it. Super users can only be added at the manager account level and automatically have access to all current and future accounts.4, 3
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from Microsoft Corporation primary sources (13 pages reviewed). How we research.
Microsoft Ads customer support
Microsoft Advertising Support (United States)
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