Cannot Remove Greyed Out Work/School Account from MS Authenticator App

Question

I have 3 accounts that are greyed out in my MS Authenticator App. I cannot remove them from the app or Android account settings. No matter what I try, in the Android (accounts) settings, the "Work Account" disappears for a moment and returns.

I am using a Pixel 8, Android 14.2 Beta

Yes, I have tried to go to my phone settings/accounts.

Yes, I have tried to delete them from MS Authenticator directly.

When I google this issue, many people have experienced or are experiencing it. Why or how is it possible for this to be a problem? Managing Microsoft accounts on Android devices should be a straightforward process. I do not want to uninstall the MS Authenticator app because I have this horrible feeling that even though it is backed up to OneDrive, it will not restore. It's happened before.

Answer 1

I think I uninstalled any account that could of been logged in or previously logged in with that work/school/uni account. I uninstalled Microsoft 365, Word etc. Everything Microsoft including Edge if you have that installed. I have a feeling because I had synced all my settings for work/school accounts, I think it was running in the background. My only recommendation is do not uninstall Microsoft Authenticator because even if you have backup on, it does not transfer or restore any other account/2FA code other than Microsoft. I actually do not understand the purpose of the Authenticator backup option if it doesn't back up every 2FA account. If you intend to reset or uninstall the authenticator app to try and get rid of the greyed out accounts, make sure you've either turned off 2FA on any of those work/school accounts or have the restore code written down somewhere to restore them because trying to reset them after the fact can be really painful and time consuming. Out of curiosity are they old uni accounts for courses you've either finished or withdrawn from? The two I struggled to remove were for uni accounts for course I had finished or withdrawn from and transferred to another uni to study.

Answer 2

Hi there. This can be done from your phone account management simply by deleting those grayed out accounts. Go to your phone\settings \accounts...You will find the same accounts there and you can simply delete them. That will remove them from your authentication app.