The password reset asks for your USERNAME, not your email - and no recovery code arrives

Modified on Tue, 4 Aug at 1:28 PM

You are locked out and the reset is not helping. In one customer's words: "I am trying to log in, but I don't know the password. I have attempted to send a password reset request multiple times, but I never get the email." In another's: "Apparently I do not remember my username and I am putting my email into the forgot password section and no recovery code is coming." A third wrote in with a single line: "I forgot my username for the Booked Solid." All three are the same wall, and none of them is a broken account. The reset in Booked Solid OS is keyed to your username, never to your email address, and when the wrong thing goes into that box the screen still tells you a code is on its way.

This article covers the normal reset, the reason the email seems to vanish, and what to do when the username itself is gone. Nothing here touches your work: your bookings and settings live in your Booking HQ folder on your own computer, behind the sign-in.

Rule one: you sign in with a username, not an email

When you first set Booked Solid up on a computer, you entered your license key and your email, and then you picked a username and a password. From that moment on, the sign-in screen only ever asks for that username and that password. It never asks for your email.

The password reset follows the same rule. Forgot your password asks for your Username, and the 6-digit code is then sent to the email address that is on file for that account. You do not type the email in on that screen, and you cannot change it there.

Why typing your email in that box sends nothing at all

Almost everyone tries their email address in the reset box first, and it is a dead end. If you enter an email address, or a username with a typo in it, the screen still says "If that account exists, a code is on its way to its email address." No code is created. No email is ever sent. Pressing the button again does not help, and it will never help, because nothing is coming.

That is deliberate rather than a bug. The screen never confirms whether an account exists, so a real username and a wrong one look identical from the outside. It is also the single biggest source of confusion in these tickets, because it says a code is on its way but nothing arrives and there is no way to tell the two cases apart from the screen.

So before you press it a fifth time: the only input that produces an email is your exact username. Skip the retries and go and find the username instead.

Reset your password, step by step

You need to be online for this, since the app has to reach the Booked Solid account service to send the code and save the new password.

Open Booked Solid OS. When you are signed out, the Account Gate (the sign-in screen, headed Welcome back) appears before the rest of the app.
Click Forgot your password, under the sign-in fields. The card changes to Reset your password.
Type your exact username into the Username box. Not your email address.
Click Send me a code. A 6-digit code goes to the email address on your account.
Open that inbox, find the code, and type it into the The 6 digit code from the email box.
Enter your new password, 8 characters or more.
Click Save my new password.
The app signs you straight in. There is no separate sign-in step afterwards.

You can back out at any point with Back to sign in. Nothing changes on your account until you click Save my new password, so leaving the reset half-finished is always safe.

You entered the right username and the code still has not arrived

If your version of this is "I never get the reset email" and you are certain the username was right, there are two likely explanations. The first is far more common than people expect.

The code went to a different inbox than the one you are watching. It is sent to whatever address the account was set up or purchased under, and that is very often not the address you write to support from. Go and find your original Booked Solid receipt or license email, and check the inbox it landed in. That is the address the code is going to.
The username does not exactly match the account. Capitalisation, a stray space, or an old username from a different product will all do it. See the section above: anything other than the exact username sends nothing at all.

While you are looking, also check your spam and promotions folders. The code comes from Booked Solid <booked@send.kivimedia.co>, and some inboxes file it away without telling you. Delivery can also lag by a minute or two.

Good to know: the code's limits

It expires in 15 minutes. If you see "That code has expired. Request a new one.", send yourself a fresh code and use the newest email.
Five wrong tries end it. After 5 failed attempts that code stops working and you need a new one. Copy and paste from the email rather than retyping.
Clicking twice in the same minute does not send a second email. The first code is still on its way and still valid, so give it a moment before you request another.

You have forgotten your username too

This is where most of these tickets actually sit. The next question is always the same: how do I find my username? Work through these in order.

First, look at the sign-in screen itself

If Booked Solid has ever been signed in on this computer, the app keeps the username after you sign out, and the Username box on the sign-in screen is already filled in with it. Look at what is sitting in that box before you assume the username is lost. If it is filled in, that is your username. Copy it into the reset screen exactly as it appears.

If the box is empty, ask the help desk to look it up

At the bottom of the sign-in screen, click Need a hand? Contact the help desk. It opens this help center, where a person can look your account up. To save yourself a round trip, send both of these in your first message:

Your username, or as much of it as you remember, if you remember any of it at all.
Either the email address you bought with (the address your license key arrived at) or the license key itself, in the format BS-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX.

With either of those, support can match the account and send your username to the email address that is on it. In a real case, that is exactly what happened: the customer named the inbox his Booked Solid mail actually lands in, support matched the account and came back with the username outright, and the code turned out to have been going to that business address rather than the personal one he had been watching.

Sending only the address you are emailing from is what turns this into an extra round of back and forth instead of one reply. That address is very often not the one the account lives under, and that is the whole problem in the first place.

If support cannot find your account at all

There is one case where a correct purchase email still turns up nothing: if you bought Booked Solid before it moved to Kivi Media, the username you picked back then may still live on the original vendor's system rather than in ours. That is not a sign that your purchase is gone. Say in your message that you bought it before the move, attach the receipt, and we will settle the account from our side. There is more background in Bought from the original Booked Solid vendor? Your old login still works.

If you never actually finished setting the app up on this computer

Do not use the password reset at all. There is no account on this machine for it to reset, so it can only ever send you nothing. Use the First time here? link on the same screen instead. Depending on your version it reads Enter your license key or Enter your license code, and it is the same link either way.

Click the First time here? link. The card changes to Set up your account.
Paste the license key from your license email. It looks like BS-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX.
Enter your email, then pick a username and a password. The Show and Hide toggle lets you check your typing.
Click Set up my account.

If you already have an account and are setting up a second machine, use Already set up on another computer? Sign in rather than the license key, and see Using Booked Solid OS on a second computer.

Two things people ask straight after this

Do I need my old license link or license key to reset my password?

No. On an account that is already activated, a password reset needs your username and nothing else. You do not have to go hunting for the key.

This matters because the original purchase link no longer opens anything useful. Clicking the old chrismichael.site link now shows a redirect page reading "Booked Solid is now part of Kivi Media". That page is expected. It is not a sign that your account, your license or your purchase has gone anywhere.

The app showed me an email address. Is that my sign-in account?

Probably not, and this has sent people down the wrong road more than once. An email address the app displays to you inside the product is most likely a mailbox you connected for Otto to work with, listed under Connections > Mail & calendars. Those are inboxes Otto reads and drafts from, and you can add or remove them yourself at any time.

Your sign-in account email is a separate thing. It is the one recorded on your license, it is set once at activation, and it is where the reset code goes. Changing one does not change the other. Change the email address on your Booked Solid account covers the difference in full.

If the email on your account is one you cannot get into any more

Support can change the address on the account, and once it is changed the reset code goes to the new inbox. Be honest with yourself about the timing, though, so you are not waiting on something that is not coming in the next ten minutes. Changing a sign-in email is an account and security action, so it is never done unattended: you will be asked to prove that the license is yours (the license key is the usual proof), and the change is escalated to a person rather than handled on the spot. Tell us up front that the on-file address is dead, and send the license key with that first message.

Write your username down

This is the tip support gives every single time, and it is the one that prevents a repeat of everything above. Once you are back in, write the username somewhere you will find it again. That, not your email, is what the app asks for at sign-in, and it is what the reset needs before it will send you anything at all.

If it still does not work

Submit a ticket from this help center, or email bookedsolid@kivimedia.freshdesk.com, and include the license key or the purchase email address so we can match the account on the first reply. Say plainly which part failed: no code arriving with a username you are sure of, no username at all, or an on-file inbox you have lost access to. A person will pick it up from there.