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

Thank you for this detailed reply. I will look at the links to learn more about this. Many thanks

New person to the thread here. Having exact same issue. I am prompted by the Microsoft Authenticator app to authenticate via the same Authenticator app. Haven't seen any actual fixes in this thread... Any ideas how to fix?

This is extremely poor design. Classic Microsoft.

Adrian,

It really matters whether you are using Microsoft Authenticator with a Work or School account (Azure AD) where an Administrator can remove the 2FA requirement from the account at least temporarily or instead using a personal Microsoft account, where if available you should be able to use a different 2FA authentication method like alternate email or text to receive a code in order to login and change the Advanced security options item titled Send sign-in notification, removing it in order to allow setting it up again properly.

The links to proper methods for setting up Authenticator for both type of accounts are provided in my previous long post, since though the Authenticator app used is now the same, the process for each of these are different due to the different back-ends for Azure AD and Microsoft 365/Outlook personal accounts.

Ben Coor also mentioned in his last post above that in his case, an apparent user of a Work or School account had Authenticator previously configured on another phone that must have been interfering with the new installation.

What exactly is happening in a specific case is not always the same, so you need to fully understand your particular environment and potential issues, since there's no way anyone can provide a single answer that applies to every possible situation.

Rob

I got a similar problem today when I got a new phone, because the old one crashed, and never came back from oblivion. On my new phone I installed the Authenticator app, but to login to that I have to confirm using the Authenticator app, which I no longer have access to on the old phone. There are NO other options for login. Just Authenticator, not email, not SMS, not anything..

This is just ****.. and yes I should have backed up the old one to the cloud, but I didn't know that was an option before now..

Tormod,

If you had 2-Step authentication (2FA) turned on then you'll need 2 alternate ways to identify yourself, which if your phone number has remained the same then one of these could be texting a code to that number.

From what I've seen, there's always an option to select alternate methods on the Microsoft account login page, it's just not always that clearly named and instead something like More Choices or something similar. I just tried this while blocking my camera to cause Hello Face to fail and it then offered options that seemed related to Work or School accounts like a key, which once I caused one of those to fail (Passkey using QR code displayed), it then finally offered another set of selections including account password, which worked as expected on my tablet which is already a trusted device in my account.

Typically, if you still know your Micrsoft password then that can be the first and you can then use these to access your Microsoft account at the following link in order to Remove the 'Send sign-in notification' selection under Security, Advanced Security options.

Microsoft account | Sign In or Create Your Account Today – Microsoft

This disables the Authenticator entirely and then you can uninstall Authenticator and restart the process using the following instructions to set it up again from scratch. You may also want to disable 2FA while logged in to make it easier to do all of this until you've gotten Authenticator reinstalled and working properly.

Add personal Microsoft accounts to the Microsoft Authenticator app - Microsoft Support

If you were using 2FA and you don't have an alternate form of identity such as your Microsoft password or a secondary email address, you may have to submit an account recovery request to Microsoft to see if they'll use whatever identity info you do have in order to regain control.

Help with the Microsoft account recovery form - Microsoft Support

Now that you've learned how easy it is to lock yourself out of your account with additional security options like Authenticator and 2FA enabled, make sure you have multiple alternate identity methods created and kept up to date to ensure it can't happen again.

Rob