Transfer Authenticator accounts to new phone

Question

I am trying to move all my accounts to my new android phone but I can't figure it out. I saw a post with someone saying to back up the old phone account then reinstall authenticator on new phone and all the accounts should populate when you sign in. It didn't work.

Answer 1

This is a tricky one and there really isn't a easy way of doing it.

It's either: re-add them manually one by one.

OR

Use personal account to backup the Authenticator app. But this may not be allowed by your IT policies.

If you have the Microsoft Authenticator app on your personal profile on Android as well, I would recommend doing this the following way:

1. Backup Authenticator app on personal profile first, then sync to new phone on personal profile -> recover from backup.
2. Once complete, turn off the backup solution on the app on both phones (personal profile).
3. On the old phone, go into the app and add your personal Microsoft account as the backup solution in settings.
4. Let it sync.
5. On new phone, go into the app and choose recover from backup.
6. Once complete, disable the backup solution.
7. You can now re-add your backup solution on the app on the personal profile.

Note: the work profile backup will temporarily overwrite your personal backup in your Microsoft account — which is why you complete the personal restore first in steps 1-2.

As mentioned, please check with your IT department and check for policies. This is not necessarily a good practice.

If you don't have many accounts, you're probably better off re-adding them manually.

Hope Microsoft can come up with a better solution for this!