I can't access my OneDrive from my institution with Authenticator

Question

A month ago my institution (university) implemented two-factor verification through the Authenticator App. At the time, I installed it, synchronised the accounts and it worked for me (it allowed me to use the app's temporary code to access my university's OneDrive account). I have been working all August and until last week it was working. Since yesterday, I have not been able to access using the procedure I had been following, I get an error stating that ‘not the code expected’, along with this error information:

Error Code: 500121 

Request Id:****

Correlation Id: 1**** 

Timestamp: 2024-08-14T10:28:32Z

I have tried:

• opening OneDrive from another browser and incognito window (same error)
• uninstalling the Authenticator application and re-synchronising the institution's account and the App (same error)
• mark in my institution's preferences the use of the App as the main method for double verification (same error)
• test from the institution's preferences that the code works (it also tells me that the code is incorrect).

I have contacted my institution but they are currently on holiday and will not respond until September. I really, really urgently need to be able to access the account and get the files synchronised. I have tried backing up the documents but many will not allow me to save them, stating ‘Error: 0x8007016A: The cloud file provider is not running’. Any solution you can give me will be of great help. Thank you very much in advance.

Moreover, right now the Word desktop application does not work in my computer. It lets me open tabs but as soon as I try to modify a document it closes them. I also have Office from the institutional account (university), is it possible that this is the reason for the failures I am having with Word?

Answer 1

Hi @María Foal

Error Code “500121” means: "Authentication failed during strong authentication request."

"The user didn't complete the MFA prompt. They may have decided not to authenticate, timed out while doing other work, or has an issue with their authentication setup."

In my opinion, you need the admin to choose "Require re-register MFA" option for your account in Microsoft Entra admin center. As this action need the admin permission, so I am afraid you need to wait for institution's back.

For the issue of your Word, please go to Word > File > Account, check if there is any error message shown under "User Information".

• If so, Office issues may be caused by account verification failure.
• If not, is there any other error message when it closes all documents?

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