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

Hey, if we’re lucky, maybe I can give vague guidance that could actually help somebody out! Please, don’t shoot me if it doesn't. But I actually got out of the loop successfully and will here try to share my experience by my best ability. It requires access to the Microsoft 365 admin center, so if you are not an administrator you will first need to go to her or him. Sorry if everybody in your organisation is locked out, then this won't save you. In my case, the accounts are workplace type accounts.

• Have the administrator log into the Microsoft 365 admin center.
• In the left menu, find Users -> Active users
• Above the user list itself, a menu bar emerges with entries like Add a user, User templates ... Click “Multi-factor authentication” (MFA).
• This gives a new tab, new user list, and MFA status per user in one column. (In my case, funnily, my looping colleague showed status “inactive” – so why was he forced to use Microsoft Authenticator if MFA was even inactive?!)
• Mark the problematic user in the list, and some options appear on the right. Click “Manage user settings” (or equivalent, I am on an exotic language myself so can’t tell literally).
• A dialogue opens with three checkboxes. And here goes the crazy thing: Tick “Require selected users to re-enter contact methods”, then “save”. (Again, not literal but by my spontaneous translation.)
• At this point, I don’t fully remember, but somehow it generated a new user experience for the looped user. Starting on the laptop, it was possible to enter the account, with access to some user settings, including some security settings. Fiddling around, and clicking “Next” on some prompt, there was a QR code appearing for the possibility of connecting the Authenticator app by scanning it.
• I think we deleted the account from the phone Authenticator and launched it again from scratch. I guess we selected the workplace account type, then the QR reader method.

(By the way, I am thinking it might be a positive thing to populate the account with a mobile number, a backup email address etc, to enable alternatives to the Authenticator until it works. This is what I tried to do, at least.)

This solution happened only after loads of lost hours of trying this and that, and the solution is the least intuitive you could imagine so it’s not strange there are currently 420 me-toos on this post and seemingly no solution presented by MS (which, if so, tells you something about MS, too, I guess). At my help was Vivek G. on Freelancer, so cred to him for providing the key idea in figuring out.

Hope this could work for you folks out there, too!

hi

You have probably figured it out by now but I think the problem is you're trying to log in to the authenticator app with an email that needs to be authenticated

To start, log in with a normal account. Like a personal email.

Then once you've logged in you will be able to login to your email that needs to be authenticated

I think anyway

If anyone else is struggling I would try doing this

It just worked for me

I had the similar issue and was able to resolve it using the following steps

1. Disable Security Defaults for the account (you can probably modify a conditional access policy as well to exclude a single user)
2. In Azure AD I went to Users -> Per-User MFA
3. I found the affected user and selected "Manage User Settings"
4. I checked all three options (NOTE: not all of these may have been necessary, this is just what I did)
   1. "Require selected users to provide contact methods again"
   2. "Delete all existing app passwords generated by the selected users"
   3. "Restore multi-factor authentication on all remembered devices"
5. Save Changes (NOTE: I did not enable MFA here. I left it as disabled in the per-user MFA section)

After doing all of this the user was able to add the account to the authenticator app and I reenabled Security Defaults. I'm not sure if all of these steps were necessary, but this is what I did to solve the issue. I did have the user uninstall and reinstall the authenticator app before going through these steps , but that seemed to have no effect. Hopefully this helps someone down the line.

Hello asdf_username

A user in my organization was having the same problem and looking for an answer I found this thread.

I was able to figure it out so I figured I'd come back here and let you guys know how I fixed it, in case it's helpful to someone else.

The problem was that the user had installed the Authenticator app in a previous phone which she lost in a lake, so when she was trying to install the Authenticator app on the new phone, the system was trying to authenticate the account sending a code to the old phone, creating a loop.

To fix it, I logged in to MS Admin Center and went to the Identity (Microsoft Entra) Admin Center.

In Entra, went to Users and clicked on the user with the issue.

In the user's profile, click on Authentication methods under the Manage section, and under Usable authentication methods delete the Authentication method "Microsoft Authenticator" which said iPhone 11 in the Detail column (the user's old phone was an iPhone 11, that's how I knew!)

After deleting the old authentication method, the user was able to setup the authenticator app on the new phone.

I hope this helps someone.

Can you please tell me the solution as I am trapped in this loop and it is very distracting!!!!!