My apologies if this should be posted elsewhere. I've searched around and cannot find an answer, and have found a few places that it seems appropriate to ask, and this is one of them. Let me know if I am wrong and I'll be happy to go elsewhere.
I'm the de facto IT guy at a small company (~30 people). We have an in-house server that runs several virtual machines (no domain). One is a Windows 8.1 machine used by our contract developer - he VPNs into our network, logs in to the VM with a Microsoft Account tied to his personal email address, and works in Visual Studio on that machine.
Unfortunately, this developer is completely unavailable to us due to medical reasons. I am working with other developers to troubleshoot some bugs and continue development of our software. I have access to Administrator accounts on this machine that are able to access the project in Visual Studio. However, I have some compiling issues and source control questions that I think would be easily answered by having access to our unavailable developer's account.
I believe the best way to get access to that account is to change it from a Microsoft Account to a Local Account, which should allow me to reset the account password without losing any data. However, all my searching has only yielded ways to change from a Microsoft Account to a Local Account if I already have access to the Microsoft Account, which I do not.
Opening the Advanced option under the Advanced tab of control userpasswords2 gives me the option to reset the account password, but warns me of data loss. I'm also suspicious that it would actually work, since it doesn't seem to be acknowledging that the account is a Microsoft Account within that option.
Any ideas? If there is another way to get access to the account in question without changing its account type or resetting its password, I am open to alternatives.