In this Quick Guide, we’ll help you get a WordPress password reset email. With that email from your WordPress site, you should be able to recover your WordPress password. If you’re unable to log into a WordPress site because you forgot your password, and you have access to the email address you used to register the account, this is the best way to go.

How to Change a WordPress Password by Email

This video explains how to reset your WordPress password the simple reset password flow that is baked into WordPress:

And below is a written guide to the steps for resetting your WordPress password by email:

How to Reset a WordPress Password by Email

1. On the WordPress site you’d like to be able to log in to. Go to the login page. If you don’t know how to find it, it’s usually at example.com/wp-login.php but we do have Quick Guide on the topic of finding the WP login page.
2. On the page (right under the box asking for your credentials) you’ll click the “Lost your password?” link.
3. On the linked page, enter either the email address or username connected to the account you’re trying to access. (You’ll need access to the email address connected to the account, which WordPress will send a password reset email to.)
4. After submit, check your email inbox. It should come pretty quick, but if you’re waiting more than a minute a look at your “Spam” folder may be necessary.
5. Click the link from that email. It should take you to a page on your site where you’ll set a new password for this WordPress admin account.
6. After setting the password, all that’s left to do is log in with the just-set password.

What to Do if the Reset Password Email is Not Working

Resetting your password by email may fail for you, for a few main reasons:

1. Your email program filters out password reset emails as spam. (Emails may land in your spam folder, or they may not even reach any folder at all, depending on the situation.)
2. Your WordPress site can’t send email because of server configuration.
3. You don’t remember or have access to the email address associated with any WordPress user on the site.

So if the WordPress password reset email flow isn’t working for you, the first thing to do is to check your spam folder; the problem may be as simple as the emails hitting that folder instead of your inbox.

If that doesn’t fix things, you’ll need a different solution than this Quick Guide covers. Fortunately, we do have two other ways you can change your WordPress admin password: using a database tool called phpMyAdmin, and using FTP. Here’s the Quick Guide to the phpMyAdmin route:

How to Change WordPress Password in phpMyAdmin (a cPanel tool)

And there you have it! With the WordPress password reset email flow above you should be able to log back into your site. If that doesn’t work for you, check out the other two methods above.