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On my first Windows Phone I added my Windows Live ID which I've used over ten years. The problem was that the account was localized to the US and not to my current country (Sweden). When I tried to update the country setting, it was not allowed.

Because of this I couldn't add a credit card, since I have Swedish credit cards and not americans. To deal with this, I had to create a second live-ID localized to Sweden and on a different e-mail address.

This means that all of my contacts is on the account I can't use. I would very much like to have my original Live-ID on the Windows Phone. How do I update country on Live account?

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When you assign a Live ID to Windows Phone and access Marketplace it creates a Zune account and Xbox account if you don't have. In that moment it assign the same country you have in Live ID to others.

The problem is that you can't change country in those services.

MAYBE you can try change the gamertag in Xbox and assign a new gamertag from your country. Switch your gamertag to a different Windows Live ID

CAUTION: You need to do a Hard Reset after that. It will erase all data in the phone.

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  • Exactly! I remember doing a factory reset in order to get my new Live-ID on the phone. But I havn't tried to switch the gamer tag to a different Live ID. I'll give it a try. Thanks! +1 – user97 Apr 25 '12 at 11:48
  • Please @BennySkogberg remember that maybe you can't change gamertag within 30 days (like the link says) so maybe you need all this time to complete this task. If this solve the problem please mark this as the answer. – Vitor Canova Apr 25 '12 at 12:15
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Not really a question about the phone, I believe you will have to contact the support for windows live. You can however add more than one live account to the phone for the purpose of email/contacts syncing. I've got 2 live accounts and an exchange account hooked in.

On the people hub go to settings, accounts and add from there. It will also let you choose what objects you want to sync.

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  • Thanks. Hopefully this helps and let me sync contacts from my "real" Windows Live account. +1 – user97 Apr 25 '12 at 11:13
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This is not possible. Been on the same boat. Also changing the gamertag will not work, because you cannot change gamertag from a different country. So creating a new LiveID on your country and then wanting to switch gamertag to the one you had before (from US) is not possible. Microsoft said this is by design and that they are working on that, but they said so for years. And they are even going against some EU law by not allowing you to switch country.

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  • That's bad, but thanks for the answer. +1 – user97 Apr 25 '12 at 13:50
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    There's even a petition you can sign: change.org/petitions/… – Alec Mev Apr 25 '12 at 15:08
  • @CodeClimber So did you already try change to another gamertag? I really want to change to US because pt-BR marketplace is so slow to receive new games. – Vitor Canova Apr 29 '12 at 17:55
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    @VitorCanova yes, did that. Unfortunately this cannot be done – CodeClimber Apr 30 '12 at 8:58
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I'm in the exact same position as you and to my knowledge it is not possible to change your Zune country. You can change your Live ID country but that doesn't affect the very important Zune country which is set in stone when you first select it.

Looking forward to Windows 8 where I assume my Zune account will become even more important I'm dismayed by the thought of having to ditch my current Live ID with all it's attachments to Microsoft products and services and create a new one just to change my Zune country.

However, apparently Microsoft acknowledges that this is a problem. On the Zune Insider podcast episode 102 Matt Akers says:

I think the key message is we’re working on it, absolutely.

For more information read the blog post Want to Move Your Zune Account to Another Country?

I wouldn't set my hopes to high though. This podcast is quite old and the problem hasn't been solved yet.

However, what I have managed to do is to attach a Danish credit card to my American Zune account and made a purchase in the Marketplace. It seems that Microsoft is more willing to accept payments than they used to be. Payment is handled on Xbox.com.

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  • Thanx. Great answer! – user97 May 8 '12 at 21:50

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