Can't open Word on iPad, Authenticator app is crazy.

Question

This place seems awfully high powered for my question, but this is where I ended up after not getting help elsewhere. I Have MS365. It works on my iMac and my iPad. I used Word on the iPad not long ago. (There has been a recent iOS update.) Today the iPad refused to open and seemed to think I didn't have an MS365 account.

During this process I kept being told to use Authenticator to sign in. It too said I don't have an account. It kept asking me to touch the Authenticator screen on my iPhone but it never sent me the number. Then my iPad told me that I rejected the attempt to authenticate but I hadn't touched the screen. I was told to change my password, which I did. I deleted the app and restored it, but that didn't change anything. Authenticator asked for the last 4 numbers of my phone number and when I put them in said the phone number was wrong.

So, what can I do? By the way, the Tags field above won't accept iOS as a tag.

Answer 1

You can restore from an authenticator cloud backup (assuming there was one) but make sure no accounts have been added to the newly install app. Then sign on with recovery account to do the restore.

You can recover your account credentials from your cloud account, but you must first make sure that the account you're recovering doesn't exist in the Microsoft Authenticator app. For example, if you're recovering your personal Microsoft account, you must make sure you don't have a personal Microsoft account already set up in the authenticator app. This check is important so we can be sure we're not overwriting or erasing an existing account by mistake. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/back-up-and-recover-account-credentials-in-the-authenticator-app-bb939936-7a8d-4e88-bc43-49bc1a700a40

or try here to recover the 365 account.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/global-customer-service-phone-numbers-c0389ade-5640-e588-8b0e-28de8afeb3f2

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Answer 2

Answer helpful, accepted.