authenticator app lost

Question

Hi there, I lost my phone and I lost the authenticator app.. i am the sole admin of the company and i cannot access to the admin portal anymore as is asking for permission through the authenticator app.

Can you help?

Answer 1

Hello @Maria Setola

If you still have an active session that can access the Microsoft Entra admin center, you may be able to create a new Global Administrator account. Since administrators generally cannot reset their own MFA methods, you can use the new Global Administrator account to reset the affected account's authentication methods and re-register Microsoft Authenticator. Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/authentication/howto-mfa-userdevicesettings#manage-user-authentication-options

If you are the only IT administrator and are completely locked out of the tenant, the usual approach involves two options:

• Contact Microsoft Support directly by phone: Contact Microsoft Office Support
• If calling support does not work, you may consider creating a trial tenant and submitting a support ticket from there on behalf of the affected (locked) tenant. Please remember to cancel the trial subscription afterward to avoid any potential charges. Please note that this process may take longer than usual (around 7-14 business days), as the Data Protection team handles a high volume of requests. As a forum moderator, I don’t have access to Microsoft internal systems and won’t be able to expedite the process.

For detailed steps, kindly refer to the referenced thread: Denied global administrator access although I am the only admin

Hope this info helpful.

---

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.