Accessing Orphaned Azure Devops organization

Question

I'm trying to access a Devops organizations of a former employee. As an admin, I'm not able to see the organization, but I know it exists because a few users have lower level access to it.

They are not able to transfer ownership. I recreated the former employees account, but they no longer have access to this organization either. How do I gain ownership if it wasn't connected to our Entra ID and I can't view it?

Answer 1

Hi Diyv,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform! Thank you for asking your question here.

Could you please try logging in with recreated former employee's account and try opening https://dev.azure.com/{yourorganization} and see if claim ownership button is visible.

• If yes, please click on claim ownership and proceed further.
• If not, I have reached out to you via Private message for more details. Please check and share them.

Answer 2

There is no other project collection administrator in this organization.

What are my recovery options for this organization? It is connected to an application in the marketplace and we can't update it.

Answer 3

Because the organization wasn’t connected to your Microsoft Entra ID and the original owner account is no longer valid, there’s no supported way for an admin to “take over” or see that standalone Azure DevOps organization from the tenant side.

Ownership recovery via Azure DevOps Administrators in Microsoft Entra ID only works when:

1. The Azure DevOps organization is connected to a Microsoft Entra tenant, and
2. The current owner and all Project Collection Administrators are inactive in that tenant.

In that case, an Azure DevOps Administrator can claim ownership as described in the orphaned organization guidance. However, this mechanism doesn’t apply to organizations that are not connected to Microsoft Entra ID.

For organizations that are Entra-connected and truly orphaned, the supported path is:

1. Confirm the organization is connected to your Microsoft Entra tenant.
2. Ensure the current owner and all Project Collection Administrators are inactive in Entra ID.
3. Have a user with the Azure DevOps Administrator role in that tenant sign in to https://dev.azure.com/{yourorganization}:
   • If that account is already a member of the organization, they use Organization settings → Overview → Change owner to assign a new owner.
   • If that account is not a member, they’ll see a 401 page with a Claim Ownership option. They select Claim Ownership, provide justification, and then can transfer ownership to another user.

If the organization is not Entra-connected and the original owner cannot sign in and transfer ownership (for example, because the original identity is gone and cannot be restored in exactly the same way), there is no documented admin-side takeover mechanism. In that case, the only supported options are:

• Have the current owner (if they can still sign in) or a Project Collection Administrator change the organization owner, or
• Work with Microsoft Support directly to see if any recovery options exist for that specific organization.

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References:

• Assign an owner to an orphaned organization
• Organization FAQs
• About accessing your organization via Microsoft Entra ID