Azure for Students blocked by Placeholder-Block policy

Hello LAXMAN SHAH,

Greetings! Thanks for raising this question in the Q&A forum.

What you're seeing is not a normal Azure for Students region or resource-type restriction (those usually show up as "RequestDisallowedByAzure" with an allowed-locations message). Your error is a policy assignment named "Deny - All Resources Creation" scoped to a management group called "Placeholder-Block", and your subscription has been placed under that management group. A management group sitting above the subscription level applies its policies to every subscription nested under it, and since you are only the subscription user (not the management group owner), you have no rights to view, move, or exempt your subscription from that scope. This is why you cannot create even a Resource Group, since the deny policy is evaluated before any resource type-specific checks happen.

"Placeholder-Block" is not a standard, publicly documented Azure for Students management group name. This strongly suggests your subscription was temporarily parked under a holding/quarantine management group, most likely as part of an internal provisioning or verification step, rather than something you configured or that is expected to remain in place. This is a backend account/tenant assignment issue, not something you can fix from within the subscription.

Here is what to do:

1. Confirm you are looking at the correct scope. In the Azure portal, go to Management groups, or run:

az account management-group list

Confirm your subscription's actual parent management group. If you don't have permission to view it, that itself confirms you are not the owner of that scope.

Do not attempt workarounds. There is no way to self-service remove, modify, or request an exemption for a policy assigned above your subscription. Attempting to move the subscription yourself is not possible without Owner/User Access Administrator rights at the management group level, which a student subscription holder does not have.

Open a support request with Microsoft. Since your subscription shows active credit ($100 of $100, 365 days remaining) but is blocked at the management group level, this needs to be corrected on the backend. In the Azure portal, go to Help + support > Create a support request, and select:

• Issue type: Subscription and account management
  • Problem type: Something else or Subscription management
    • In the description, include your subscription ID, the exact error (Code: RequestDisallowedByPolicy, Policy: Deny - All Resources Creation), and the full management group path (/providers/Microsoft.Management/managementGroups/Placeholder-Block).

Azure for Students subscriptions get free support for subscription and billing issues even without a paid support plan, so you do not need a premier/professional direct support agreement to open this ticket.

1. Mention this is blocking Resource Group creation specifically. Since your error confirms the deny policy triggers before any resource-type evaluation, be clear in the ticket that even an empty Resource Group cannot be created, which rules out any resource-specific quota or region cause and points squarely at the management group placement.

If this answer helps you kindly accept the answer which will help others who have similar questions.

Best Regards,

Jerald Felix.

Hi @LAXMAN SHAH Thanks for sharing the error details this actually isn't a simple region restriction. The RequestDisallowedByPolicy message you're seeing points to a deny-all policy assignment inherited from a management group, not the "Allowed resource deployment regions" policy you initially suspected.Why this is happening

Every Azure subscription sits under exactly one management group, and it automatically inherits any policies and role assignments applied there. In your case, the subscription appears to be parented under a management group (something like "Placeholder‑Block" or similar staging/quarantine group) that carries a deny-all rule so no resource, in any region, can be created until that's addressed.

Steps to confirm and fix

1. Capture the full error JSON (not just the display message): run your deployment with --debug or expand the failed operation in the Azure portal's Activity Log. Look for the policyAssignment.id and policyDefinition.id the last segment of each is the assignment/definition name.
2. Check your management group hierarchy:
   1. az account management-group list -o table
   2. If this returns empty or errors, you don't have visibility above the subscription that's the key signal for what to do next.
3. If the intended parent is the tenant root management group: moving a subscription to the root doesn't require the usual write permissions, since it's the default landing spot for all new subscriptions . You can try:
   1. az account management-group subscription add --name "<TenantRootGroupId>" --subscription "<sub-id>"
   2. Allow up to 30 minutes for the change to propagate, since Azure Resource Manager caches the management group hierarchy .
4. If step 3 fails with an authorization error: The management group likely belongs to your organization/institution's tenant. In that case, you'll need your tenant's Azure admin to either re-parent the subscription or create a scoped policy exemption:
   1. az policy exemption create --name "StudentSubExemption" --policy-assignment "<assignment-id>" --scope "/subscriptions/<sub-id>" --exemption-category "Waiver"

Reference documentation:

• Manage Azure subscriptions at scale with management groups - covers moving subscriptions and the root management group exception
• Organize your resources with management groups - explains how policy/RBAC inheritance cascades from parent to subscription Resource Group / can’t create any resource” behavior you’re seeing.

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