Administrator access

Please note that our forum is a public platform. Kindly ensure that you hide any personal or organizational information to protect personal data.  

Hi Joe

Since the former office manager was apparently the only administrator for your Microsoft 365 for Business organization and you no longer have access to that administrator account, this cannot normally be resolved by resetting one of the regular users’ passwords.

First, please check whether any other account in the organization has a Global Administrator role. If another Global Administrator exists, that administrator can sign in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and assign the appropriate administrator role to a new account.

If there is no other accessible Global Administrator, you will need to contact Microsoft Support and request assistance with Microsoft 365 tenant / Global Administrator recovery. Microsoft's specialized support team can verify ownership of the tenant and assist with restoring administrative access.

You can try to contact Microsoft Support via phone service number: Customer service phone numbers - Microsoft Support. The agent will be able to create a ticket for you under the affected tenant and then transfer this ticket to Data Protection team who could help you to regain access.  

When a call is made to support, the first step is to provide an automated voice response from AI. Be careful, you won't be able to speak to a support representative if you don't respond appropriately here. 

Here's an example of a response that actually led to a support representative. Please refer to it. 

Q. Can you tell me if you are calling as a home user who uses a product or service at home or a business user who uses it in your business to provide the best assistance? 
A.I am a business user. 
Q. Thank you. Can you give me the details of your inquiry? 
A. Login technical support. 
Q. First of all, can you tell me which products you are inquiring about today? 
A. Microsoft 365 business Standard。 
Q. Please wait a moment, I understand Microsoft 365. Are you calling about a new case or an existing one? 
A. New. 
Q. To receive phone support, your phone number must be associated with your Microsoft 365 admin profile. To do this, go to aka.ms/m365profile. Again, it aka.ms/m365profile . This can take 48 hours. In the meantime, you can go to aka.ms/m365profile and file a case online. If you prefer, you can also text the link to the phone number you are calling. What do you think? 
A. The phone number is already linked to the link. 
Q. Can you tell me about the products in your inquiry? 
A. Microsoft 365 Business Standard. 
Q. Are you a Global Administrator? 
A. That's right. 
Q. I'm sorry. I didn't understand. Are you a global administrator for your domain? 
A. Yes, I am a global administrator for the domain. 
Q. If you have any inquiries, you can contact a Microsoft representative. Are you sure? 
A. Yes. Please. 
Q. Yes, I understand. Please wait a moment.

Please note that this team is always overwhelmed, so you might need to wait for them to call you, this should take 3-10 working days.

In case the phone line is not supportive, you can consider directly submitting a support request as a helpful workaround:    

-Create a temporary Microsoft 365 tenant using a trial license: Go to Microsoft 365 Business Plans and Pricing and click Try for free to set up a temporary Microsoft 365 tenant with a trial license.    

-Use this new account to sign in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and submit a support request on behalf of your primary (locked) account.   

-Select the Help & support (headset) icon. If Support Assistant is enabled, turn it off > Type contact support in the search box > Select Contact support, then choose Phone or Email to submit your request.   

Note: This method doesn't require you to use your new account for your business. Instead, it allows you to create a temporary global administrator account so you can submit a support request, as your original global administrator account is locked out due to issues with multi-factor authentication. The trial account is free for one month. Be sure to delete it after submitting your support request to avoid any automatic renewals or charges from Microsoft.     

For further instructions, you can follow this guide: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn.   

Once administrator access has been recovered, I recommend creating at least one additional appropriately secured emergency/backup Global Administrator account so that the organization is not dependent on a single administrator in the future.

Just a quick note that this forum is a peer-to-peer community, so while members can share advice and experiences only, members do not have access to internal databases or the ability to escalate cases directly to Microsoft’s internal teams. Therefore, please kindly contact the Microsoft Support team for the most efficient help.    

I hope this information helps.