How to fix M365 losing connection to saved Account?

Alessandro Basso 0 Reputation points
2023-11-15T10:45:21.4666667+00:00

Hi There

For context: At the moment I am the only one working in IT in a medium sized company. I did not (yet) get any proper IT education, my knowledge is either self-thaught or learned on the job, so please forgive any statements that do not make total sense or similar.

We've been running a mix between our local AD and Entra ID / Azure AD for about 1.5 years. That's also the time we've made the change from Office 2016 to M365. Since March this year I am getting more and more requests from users stating that office is losing connection to their account. Most of the times the issue is noticed because outlook mailboxes stop updating and outlook is showing the "Enter Passwort" message on the bottom right. When the user then clicks on the message he receives the following error
User's image

After consulting with one of our partners they found out that this seems to be a problem with the "Microsoft AAD Broker Plugin". At the moment we can fix the issue if it occurs with either removing the account from the windows settings (--> Accounts --> Work or School Account) and re-entering it, or by updating the said Plugin. (Powershell cmdlet we use:

if (-not (Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin)) { Add-AppxPackage -Register "$env:windir\SystemApps\Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin_cw5n1h2txyewy\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown } Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin)

Office is always kept updated, as is our Windows 10 (22H2). I have also noticed that the error often occurs right after the new monthly Windows update is installed. However it still pops up out of nowhere when there are no changes made to the client or account. I am running out of ideas on what could cause this and I also struggle to find anything related online, so I am hoping on ideas or maybe even fixes here.

Thank you a lot in advance & greetings from Switzerland

Alessandro

Windows 10
Windows 10
A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.
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Office
Office
A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.
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