How can I recover a Microsoft account using my Minecraft username?

Question

When I tried to open Minecraft today, it asked me to sign into a Microsoft account. I do not remember the email and password for the account I used to buy Minecraft.

I have already tried entering my gmail address and phone number into the “forgot email address” section, but they were not linked to an account.

Going into the Minecraft launcher shows two usernames, my Minecraft username and another username.

Every recovery option asks for an email address or linked phone number. Can I find out the email linked to my Minecraft account using either of these two usernames (or inside my .minecraft folder)?

Otherwise, what should I do? Are there any other ways for me to log into the Minecraft launcher?

Additional information:

I will migrate some of my comments to this section to avoid extended discussion using the comments.

• My launcher_accounts.json file contains "type" : "Xbox", and does not seem to contain a full email address.

• I don't think I've ever had a "Mojang account". Minecraft was probably at about 16.5 when I bought it.

• I do not use my Microsoft account for anything else.

Answer 1

Contact support and give them your Transaction ID.

If you do not have access to your email, we can change your email address so that you can reset your password in the future, but will first need to verify account ownership. Please provide your transaction ID or gift code from when the account was purchased. For information on how to locate your transaction ID, or recover it if you no longer have it, please see https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360029977371.

In my case, my bank's online interface only has transactions from the past 2 years, and my purchase was roughly 10 years ago. Additionally, the email I used was a school account which I no longer have access to. In this case, they asked for the following information:

Email Used to Create Account:
Do you have access to this email:
Any other emails you may have had on this account:
Transaction ID from Purchase:
Month and Year of Account Registration:
City and Country of Account Registration:
Date of birth:

Since I was previously able to use the account to access the Java edition, I also provided info from %AppData%\Roaming\.minecraft\launcher_profiles.json, specifically the authenticationDatabase which included values for displayName, accessToken, userid, uuid, and username. They didn't mentioned if this information helped, but after over a year of dealing with support I was providing anything that could remotely identify the account.

Not sure if they've gotten better in the past 6 months, but it took 3-4 months to get a non-automated response from them. Have patience and know that their initial responses are going to be generic advice like "reset your password".