Problem with MFA, logins and Authenticator for each

Question

Problem with MFA, logins and Authenticator for each

Charles Steinhardt 0

Under the same email account, I have

An Azure "work" account I haven't used in years nor want to and its the only one I can log into - even though its not the one I wnat.
An Azure account somehow registered as "personal" \I am paying for and the only one I want to use.
A Microsoft Office 365 account.

Both the Office 365 and the Azure "work" account (the azure tenant I don't want and are unused) can be logged into although Microsoft Authenticator doesn't work - I just have a code texted to me for MFA.

I can no longer login into the most important Azure account, the "personal" one with the tenants I need. I have all the subscription names and ID's. I have tried everything suggested, including CLI commands which sometimes used to work but not anymore.

At one point I was able to add the "work" account to authenticator, and the personal account was present to with a weird "...#EXT#...name but that would only work by CLI at one time but no more plus those entries have been deleted from my Authenticator app.

Hence I am totally uanable to get to my "personal" account and frankly was rarely successful taking great efforts - it was "MFA hell" I couldn't cure despite the help documentation suggestions.

My goal:

Azure: I want one account for logging into the the account with the tenants I want with my normal email address. I don’t need the older “work” account. If they can’t switch or remove the old work, I need a guaranteed way to access my tenants that were under my "personal" (same email address) but are no longer accessible..
Office 365: to use the same normal email address for logging in.
Would like to get authenticator working properly for both that one Azure account and my Office 365 account.

Please can you help?
Charles

Thanmayi Godithi 11,825 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-25T12:34:23.0133333+00:00
Hi Charles Steinhardt ,

First, please try resetting your MFA for the affected account from the Microsoft Entra admin center (if you have access to another Global Administrator in the tenant). After the reset, sign in again and re‑register Microsoft Authenticator.

Below are the steps to reset the MFA:

Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.

Navigate to Identity > Users > All users.

Select the affected user, then choose Authentication methods.

At the top of the window, click on "Require re-register MFA".

If resetting MFA does not help, this appears to be a tenant lockout / identity conflict scenario (personal and work/guest account using the same email). In that case, we’ll need to escalate this to the Microsoft Data Protection team for further assistance.

Please share the following details with us via private message only (do not post publicly), so we can proceed:

Contact phone number (with country code)

Contact email address

Affected account email address

Tenant ID (if available)

Azure subscription ID(s)

Country and time zone

Once we receive these details, we’ll review and assist you further.

Your answer

Thanmayi Godithi 11,825 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-25T12:34:23.0133333+00:00

Hi Charles Steinhardt ,

First, please try resetting your MFA for the affected account from the Microsoft Entra admin center (if you have access to another Global Administrator in the tenant). After the reset, sign in again and re‑register Microsoft Authenticator.

Below are the steps to reset the MFA:

Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.

Navigate to Identity > Users > All users.

Select the affected user, then choose Authentication methods.

At the top of the window, click on "Require re-register MFA".

If resetting MFA does not help, this appears to be a tenant lockout / identity conflict scenario (personal and work/guest account using the same email). In that case, we’ll need to escalate this to the Microsoft Data Protection team for further assistance.

Please share the following details with us via private message only (do not post publicly), so we can proceed:

Contact phone number (with country code)

Contact email address

Affected account email address

Tenant ID (if available)

Azure subscription ID(s)

Country and time zone

Once we receive these details, we’ll review and assist you further.