Microsoft Authenticator is asking me to authenticate using Microsoft Authenticator to use Microsoft Authenticator

I am stuck in the authenticator infinite loop on two of my accounts: one for small business, one for school. I have 1 private account where I had luckily added phone and e-mail as backup, so I could get it without using (or rather, getting abused by) the authenticator app.

So, how on Earth can I get into my accounts? I can't find any support, I can't find any answers. Is there truly no way of accessing them without calling a Microsoft consultant on the phone? How do I resolve this?

Again, my Authenticator is asking me to identify by means of the Authenticator app. Awesome.

Grace,

Thanks for the confirmation that what I suggested for individual users of Microsoft personal accounts actually worked, since I'd suggested deleting the existing authenticator method and setting it up again from scratch in one of my fist posts in this thread, though that was before I learned that most posting here were actually using Work or School accounts in Azure, where the same process requires an administrator.

Deleting the authenticator method from your personal account should completely remove any remnants of an old phone for that account, resulting in exactly what you experienced as the process sets the new device up using the same steps that would normally have occurred for any new phone.

The 'loop' in this thread is apparently always caused by leftover remnants of an old phone, while the biggest problem for many is they're not the administrator of their own Work or School account and in quite a few cases no one in the smaller businesses often involved truly knows how to use or possibly even access their organization's administrator account.

Rob

Did you try to delete the old phone as a verification method? I'm sorry that is SO frustrating...

Its an ongoing issue since more than 2 years, Yes I had an old phone that died, it had microsoft authentificator, And now when I try to login it ask me to provide the authentificator code from my dead phone, amazing !, it could litterally just have asked me email verification, many solutions are possible, most of my friends have the same issue, but hey, microsoft didn't do anything since TWO YEARS on this problem, nothing has changed, nothing has been fixed.

I had this issue and was able to fix it with this method:

In my case I had my account set up to authenticate on another device already (personal phone) so when I tried to set it up on my work phone, it put me in the authenticator loop. What I ended up doing was using this page:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/set-up-the-microsoft-authenticator-app-as-your-verification-method-33452159-6af9-438f-8f82-63ce94cf3d29

It took me to the list of methods I had already installed. I deleted the authenticator method connected to my personal phone, then added a new authenticator method - it gave me a QR code to scan on the authenticator app to sign in and it set up and worked great!

I hope this helps some people because it was a very frustrating few days....