Stuck in an infinite loop of needing to already be signed in to the Authenticator app to approve a sign in FOR the authenticator app.

I ran into the same issue after buying new phone and erasing the old one before setting up my Microsoft stuff (outlook, authenticator etc.)

I finally managed to solve this by:

1. Logging to microsoft account on my PC
2. Under Security Info tab, I saw my old phone used for multifactor authentication
3. I clickend delete next to the old phone and confirmed.
4. I was then able to go through the authenticator setup on my phone, escaping the loop!

Maybe this helps. Although I was already logged in to my microsoft account on desktop PC and did not require any multifactor authentication to access it, so if you aren't already logged in I can imagine it will want you to authenticate, sending you down the loop on desktop as well.

I wanted to respond because I found the issue.

I had trouble getting into my school account because it needed to be authenticated but I couldn’t get in because to get in I had to get authenticated.

I took this to IT support at my college and they said the issue was the result of getting a new phone, thus i guess confusing Microsoft Authentication. I don’t know if you can do this yourself or if you have to take it to IT but he managed to merge both accounts and this time when I set up the account it asked for some more info and then let me sign in and it works now. Hope this helps anyone as I was very frustrated.

I keep trying to sign into Minecraft and it's keep sending me back where it's saying Minecraft is not responding

In case anyone needs this with the new iphone 16- i had the same issue, spoke with IT at my firm. They said the issue is that microsoft authenticator actually anchors to the original phone it was installed on. So the authenticator it wants you to open is actually on the OLD phone. Unfortunately I had wiped the old phone but the IT admin at my job is able to unlock it from the old phone and can give a QR code to install into the new phone. So my only advice is to call IT, you need to have admin privileges to do this.

I don't exactly remember. What I do remember is that I went to Google Play and had to enable the authenticator (it was already downloaded). I do not remember entering a code and cannot see how I could have done so if it had asked for one.