Unable to recover my accounts and codes generated by Authenticator after changing phone

Question

I recently changed phones, so I again downloaded the Authenticator app on it.

I logged in my account but none of the generated codes reappeared as before. So I find myself stuck on access to certain accounts as a result of that. How can I arrange this and retrieve my access and data from before?

Answer 1

Hello Mister Baguette,

Thanks for your question.

If you do not have access to the old phone, for work/school accounts will you will need to contact the administrators to help u re-register/reset those account.

If you have access to the old phone follow the steps below:

To move your authenticator app and configure accounts without losing data, you need to:

• Go to your authenticator app
• Open Microsoft Authenticator. Tap the three vertical dots at the top right, and then tap "Settings."
• In the "Backup" section, toggle-On "Cloud Backup" on an Android phone, or "iCloud Backup" on an iPhone.
• This will proceed to back up your data. (Note, this will back this up to the account you used to set authenticator up)

You can then proceed to navigate to your new phone

• Open your fresh Authenticator and navigate to recovery tool. In recovery you should see >> "Already have a back up? sign in to your recovery account"
• Once you do this, You'll be asked to sign in to the Microsoft account you used for the backup on your old phone. Your accounts will then automatically be added to Microsoft Authenticator on your new one.

Make sure you confirm all is set on the new one before removing the old by verifying you recieve on the new device

You can mark it 'Accept Answer' and 'Upvote' if this helped you

Regards,

Abiola