How to recover your LinkedIn account

I’ve seen it many times over the years. You lost access to your LinkedIn account. Maybe you forgot your password, you lost access to your previous email address that’s connected to the account, or maybe you deleted your account and want it back.

Don’t panic! There are ways to recover access to your LinkedIn account.

Recovering access to LinkedIn account

You may find yourself in a situation in which you cannot access your account. For example, say you made your LinkedIn account when you started a new job, but then you switched to a different company. As a result, you most likely lost access to your work email. When this happens, you will not be able to access your account, and none of your connections can contact you by email if you don’t get it updated. 

While losing access to your account can be frustrating and inconvenient, there are ways way to regain access to it. 

• Have access to your email but forgot your password? You can reset your password.
• Have your ID on hand? You can verify your identity by scanning your government-issued ID. Keep in mind that your access will only be temporary, so make sure you update what you need to in order to keep access.

There are also a few precautions you can take to prevent losing access:

• Sign up with your personal email address instead of a work email.
• Add more than one email address to your LinkedIn account. You can sign in with any email that you have added to your account, and reset your password with any of them.
• Add your phone number for quick recovery.

Reactivating a deleted LinkedIn account

If you decided to close your LinkedIn account for some reason, you have 14 days to reactivate it. If you let 14 days pass without reactivation, you will not be able to regain access to it.

You can reopen your account by logging in, and you should see the option to reactivate. Select Reactivate, and LinkedIn will send you an email confirmation. Account accessed! You can get back to connecting, exploring, or whatever it is you use LinkedIn for.

Losing access to any social media accounts can be very frustrating, but thankfully, most platforms have different ways to recover your accounts. Keep in mind that the platforms aren’t trying to make recovery difficult; they simply want to make sure someone else isn’t attempting to access your account.