Unable to activate syncing in Edge with one work account, but a different work account syncs as expected

Question

I am the IT administrator of several O365 tenants - two of which have accounts specifically for me to use on a daily basis. I'm mentioning this because I want it to be clear that I have complete control over the tenants and I use the associated profiles/accounts on a daily basis.

Over the last month, I have migrated multiple organizations from Chrome to Edge and the transition has mostly been very smooth up until it wasn't. People were initially resistant, but they warmed up nearly immediately after seeing the improvements and even advantages. I've been using Edge for several months to test it ahead of a larger transition with an account in tenant 1 (T1), which has gone well and syncing has always worked. After migrating all of the users in T1 to Edge, I started migrating the users in a different tenant (T2), which did not go so well. Stupidly, I assumed there would be no differences between the tenants because I set them up the same way, but I should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

The first four users in T2 who migrated to Edge tried to sign in at my direction; only two were able to do so at that moment, however. I figured the other two with the issue did something wrong, so I tried it myself and my account didn't work either. I looked through the Azure AD logs (sign-in, audit, etc.), but nothing stuck out. After about a week, the first two users were no longer able to sync on any device whereas it had previously worked on everything, e.g. Edge on iOS, Edge on Windows 10, and Edge on OSX. All of T2 is, at this point, unable to sync in any version of Edge even though the log in sequence works as expected and the browser accepts the profiles as valid. New tabs show personalized O365 informational profiles, accounts are remembered, etc., but sync doesn't work.

I created a ticket with O365 support, but they nearly immediately told me it isn't an O365 issue and then closed the ticket. I disagree because I have four tenants loaded side-by-side-by-side-by-side and only one doesn't work. I can reliably and consistently log in to Edge and see valid syncing on three tenants, but not the other.

From edge://sync-internals in a T2 account:

Every error message is the same:

Error: GenerateCryptoErrorsForTypes@../../components/sync/driver/data_type_manager_impl.cc:42, cryptographer error was encountered:

Here's a link to another user asking the same question. This is happening on a Windows 10 Pro installation with the latest version of Edge. There are four profiles - three from O365 tenants and one with a free Microsoft account. Only the account from T2 fails to sync.

I've searched the web for the error code shown above for hours and hours and hours, but nothing has worked. I know there was some funny business in the T2 O365 administrator portal regarding switching the primary domain from one to another and there are also users with accounts on different domains, e.g.:

• ******@domain1.com
• ******@domain1.com
• ******@domain2.com
• ******@domain2.com

None of that should matter and, even if it does, one of the other tenants (T3) has a similar situation with no issues. I've tried modifying every setting I can find related to authentication and security, but nothing has worked - MFA on, MFA off, creating new users on the primary domain, using different computers, creating new user profiles in Windows, and many other things. 

The long and short of this problem is I essentially forced the company that uses T2 to do the transition, which is completely my fault, and now it doesn't work at all. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: I realized T2 does not have any enterprise licenses, which, according to this page, is a problem. T2 has Microsoft 365 Basic and Premium licenses only. Could that really be part of the issue? It wouldn't make sense because free Microsoft accounts work, but that's what the page says.

Answer 1

Hi Anthony. I'm Greg, an installation specialist, 10 years awarded Windows MVP, and Volunteer Moderator, here to help you.

If unable to sync a Work account with Edge, see here:

https://www.windowscentral.com/edge-insider-bui...

https://www.reddit.com/r/edge/comments/f05bqc/m...

https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/08/21/...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/mic...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussi...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/enterpri...

If none of those help i would ask this question at our sister forums for IT Professionals, Technet forums, as Community is strictly an end-consumer forum. Go here: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-...

There are also good IT Pro forums here:

https://www.spiceworks.com/

https://www.techrepublic.com/forums/

I hope it helps.

Answer 2

Sync is not supposed to work in my tenant because I apparently don't have the right license. Checking the license status via Powershell showed incorrect information, which dozens of emails and chats with support did not catch until yesterday. I am flabbergasted that Edge will sync with free outlook.com accounts, but not a paid O365 account unless I pay for one of the more expensive licenses. Unbelievable.

Answer 3

I agree with anthony_pse on this that if you pay for any services this option should be include like the free accounts. I am having the same thing with Windows 10 E3 VDA licenses. My work around is to use a regular free account at the moment.