AADSTS5000225 – Tenant blocked due to inactivity, need reactivation for Visual Studio Marketplace publisher

Question

AADSTS5000225 – Tenant blocked due to inactivity, need reactivation for Visual Studio Marketplace publisher

Ben Gao 0

Hello,

I am unable to access my Azure tenant and related services. When attempting to sign in to Azure DevOps (to generate a PAT for VS Code extension publishing), I receive the following error:

Sign-in failed

Error code: interaction_required

Error message: interaction_required: AADSTS5000225: This tenant has been blocked due to inactivity. To learn more about tenant lifecycle policies, see https://aka.ms/TenantLifecycle Trace ID: 7e150926-bbc0-4aeb-a728-49edbcba2a00 Correlation ID: 019e6265-36e9-7ad7-862c-e276e1bbf2a8 Timestamp: 2026-05-26 03:47:41Z

This tenant is now actively used as the identity provider for my publisher account on the Visual Studio Marketplace. As a result:

I cannot access Azure DevOps to generate a Personal Access Token
I am unable to publish updates to my VS Code extensions via the CLI
My extensions may become unavailable if I cannot push updates

I did not receive any notification or warning prior to this.

Request: Please assist in reactivating my Azure AD tenant so I can resume managing my VS Code Marketplace publisher and extensions.

If any verification or additional information is required, I am ready to provide it.

Thank you for your help.

VEMULA SRISAI 13,900 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-05-26T04:43:23.2133333+00:00

Hello Ben Gao,

The error message you are seeing indicates that your tenant has been inactive for more than 200 days after the billing cycle, which triggered Microsoft's process to remove inactive tenants. At this stage, the OMS commerce system places a login block AADSTS5000225, Twenty days after this block is applied, the tenant is permanently deleted.

To restore access, the tenant must have been blocked for less than 20 days. After 30 days, the tenant is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.

We can reactivate your tenant only if it has been blocked for less than 20 days, please share the requested details in private message so that we can reactivate your account.

Once we have the requested details, we can proceed with your account reactivation
Ben Gao 0 Reputation points

2026-05-27T13:02:05.4266667+00:00

Hi Srisai,

Just following up — I sent the requested details in our private message thread yesterday and early today.

I understand the tenant has been blocked for longer than the standard 20-day window, but the error code is still AADSTS5000225 (blocked) rather than AADSTS90072 (deleted), which suggests it hasn't been permanently removed yet.

I'm a Visual Studio Marketplace publisher and without this tenant I cannot generate a PAT to publish extension updates via the CLI. If reactivation is truly not possible, please advise on the best alternative path so I can resume publishing.

Thank you for your help!

-Ben

1 answer

Your answer

VEMULA SRISAI 13,900 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-05-26T04:43:23.2133333+00:00

Hello Ben Gao,

The error message you are seeing indicates that your tenant has been inactive for more than 200 days after the billing cycle, which triggered Microsoft's process to remove inactive tenants. At this stage, the OMS commerce system places a login block AADSTS5000225, Twenty days after this block is applied, the tenant is permanently deleted.

To restore access, the tenant must have been blocked for less than 20 days. After 30 days, the tenant is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.

We can reactivate your tenant only if it has been blocked for less than 20 days, please share the requested details in private message so that we can reactivate your account.

Once we have the requested details, we can proceed with your account reactivation
Ben Gao 0 Reputation points

2026-05-27T13:02:05.4266667+00:00

Hi Srisai,

Just following up — I sent the requested details in our private message thread yesterday and early today.

I understand the tenant has been blocked for longer than the standard 20-day window, but the error code is still AADSTS5000225 (blocked) rather than AADSTS90072 (deleted), which suggests it hasn't been permanently removed yet.

I'm a Visual Studio Marketplace publisher and without this tenant I cannot generate a PAT to publish extension updates via the CLI. If reactivation is truly not possible, please advise on the best alternative path so I can resume publishing.

Thank you for your help!

-Ben

Answer 1

The error AADSTS5000225: This tenant has been blocked due to inactivity means the Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) tenant backing the Azure DevOps and Visual Studio Marketplace identity has been put into an inactive state and sign‑in is blocked.

Key points from the tenant lifecycle behavior:

When a tenant is marked inactive, sign‑ins are blocked and the error AADSTS5000225 is expected.
Administrators can request reactivation only within 20 days of the tenant entering the inactive state.
After 20 days in this blocked state, the tenant is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.

To proceed:

Determine whether reactivation is still possible
Reactivation is only possible if the tenant has been blocked for less than 20 days. If it has been longer than 20 days, the tenant and its identities cannot be restored.
If within 20 days: contact Microsoft to request reactivation
As the tenant admin, open a support case with Microsoft to request tenant reactivation:
- Use the official global support phone numbers listed in the tenant‑inaccessible documentation.
- Provide details such as the tenant ID or tenant domain (for example, yourtenant.onmicrosoft.com), the error code AADSTS5000225, and that this tenant is used as the identity provider for a Visual Studio Marketplace publisher.
- Do not submit multiple requests for the same issue; wait for the decision on the initial case before opening another.
Sign in using a tenant‑specific endpoint (if directed by support)
If support provides the tenant ID or confirms it is still present, sign in with a tenant‑specific URL such as:
- https://portal.azure.com/<TenantId>
- or https://portal.azure.com/<yourTenantName>.onmicrosoft.com
  This can sometimes allow access to the portal for further actions once the block is lifted.
If the tenant is already deleted (blocked > 20 days)
- The tenant cannot be recovered.
- A new tenant must be created and used going forward.
- For Visual Studio Marketplace and Azure DevOps, this would require re‑establishing identities and, if supported by those services, re‑linking or recreating publisher accounts under the new tenant.
Avoid repeated auth attempts while blocked
Application owners and developers should minimize authentication requests against the blocked tenant until it is reactivated, and avoid submitting multiple assistance requests in parallel.

Because Visual Studio subscriptions and Marketplace publishing rely on Microsoft Entra identities, regaining access to the tenant (if still within the 20‑day window) via Microsoft support is the only path to restore the ability to sign in, generate PATs, and manage extensions under the existing publisher identity.

References: