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I have successfully restored Authenticator to a new phone. All the accounts are working except for the five Microsoft 365 work accounts that I use.
They all tell me, "Action required. Scan the QR code provided by your organization to finish recovering this account".
When I log into My Account (myaccount.microsoft.com), I can't find anywhere where a QR code is displayed.
Where do I find the QR codes that Authenticator is looking for?
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Thank you so much (Takudzwa A Vafana). A really helpful and clear solution to the hours I've spent elsewhere. Awesome.
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As of Sep 2023 you can find the QR code for "Action Required. Scan the QR code provided..." here:
https://mysignins.microsoft.com/security-info
Security info > + Add sign-in method > Choose a method > Authenticator App > Add
Then click 'Next' through all the prompts until it says 'Set up your account' and a QR code is generated.
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As of 3/23/24 Charlotte Miriam Rogers seems to still be accurate - thank you. My problem with this entire behavior is the how Microsoft is misleading during the process. If this app has the ability to be backed up and restored, then let it do that. If it can't restore the Microsoft account, tell me. Do NOT tell me to scan the QR code "provided by your organization" when there's no such thing and you waste my time and my Admin's time trying to find such a code. Tell me to reset this account from scratch, because that's what's taking place. Tangent topic: why is the backup process limited to a personal MS account - how does that make sense?
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Bill Halfmann has it bang on - it is a terrible error dialogue that MS have chosen and causes lots of fraught conversations between IT support teams and staff/ users who ALL INSIST you must give them a QR code when actually you need to 're-require multi factor authentication' (and since MS Entra, that's moved to a different place than with Azure. Dumb move MS !!! PLEASE fix it
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I agree with both of the above folks. How many people that work in IT have had to get a new phone.. What a horror when I have to re do 100's of accounts. Also being the owner of my business, who thought it was a great idea to let people use their business email for a personal account. Talk about double confusion when they leave the company, we delete the address and not they can't reset it. Microsoft needs to work on the basics.. AI,, your guys need to just figure out the intelligence part first.
Try here.
https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/r/#/profile
then additional security verification
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This does NOT show the QR code that Authenticator needs to restore an existing account following its Restore from Backup on the phone.
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"then additional security verification" this options doesn't exist.
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The problem with this solution is accessing the security info in your account settings requires successful authentication (at least in my environments), which you can't complete if your authenticator isn't working. Someone from your IT department (me) has to require re-registeration of your MFA. As an admin, I've been unable to find a way to help someone recover their Microsoft Authenticator other than clicking the option "Require re-register multifactor authentication" within Entra. Having backups enabled in Microsoft Authenticator doesn't seem to do anything for enterprise accounts. My personal Microsoft Account was recovered, but none of my enterprise or business accounts were. All of those say I need to scan a QR code from my organization to finish recovering those, which is basically the same process as not having backups turned on in the first place.
If you're a 365 admin, you can go here https://aad.portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_AAD_IAM/ActiveDirectoryMenuBlade, look up the user, click authentication methods in the left pane (it's also displayed as a center tile for me) then click the Require re-register multifactor authentication option at the top. Now, when the user tries to access their security info at office.com or http://aka.ms/mfasetup, instead of being prompted to complete an authentication request, they'll instead be prompted that their organization requires additional setup. Follow the wizard (next, next, etc.), and it will display the QR code.
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Still stuck in a loop asking for verification on authenticator (which I can't access)
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yes i found the answer
yes i found the answer
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where is it?? I cannot login
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This is a poor solution and is short sited. I have been invited to 10+ tenants, which required me to setup 2FA in the app. I forsee that me and my 1000 users using Teams and having them being invited into other tenants, will create a significant problem trying to restore these EXT (external) 2FA items that exist in the authenticator app.
I swapped phones and have access to my old phone. It is ridiculously and frankly impossible to get these 10+3rd party tenant 2FA codes back. What if I had 100? 1000? There has to be a better way to backup and restore these 2FA keys. Right now I see that there is no way. This is ridiculous and short sited on Microsoft's part.
Please see Takudzwa A Vafana's response as the most up-voted answer rather than the wrong answer that is listed as the "accepted solution." It's still not perfect, because you have to delete an account to "restore it," but it works and doesn't require any IT intervention. The worst facet to this is that if you are a member of a dozen tenants, you would need to reset all of them, but given that each only takes a few seconds, this isn't TOO bad (but yeah, it's still bad, and MS should improve).
I guess my tenants have turned up security because accessing the security info panel requires a successful MFA approval which you can't do if your authenticator isn't working. We even have it enabled so you don't get prompted for MFA for Office apps when you're inside our network, but the security info panel still prompts you to approve MFA to get to that page. I posted the workaround today. In short, an admin would need to pull up your user account in Entra, go to authentication methods and click the button for require re-authorization for MFA. Now, when you try to go to the security info panel (here's a Microsoft shortened URL: http://aka.ms/mfasetup) it will inform you that your organization requires additional setup and walks you through setting up Microsoft Authenticator including the QR code. It's possible your tenant isn't showing an MFA prompt for the security info page if you've recently approved an MFA request. If you're trying to test it, use incognito or private mode in a browser to see if http://aka.ms/mfasetup will force an authentication request. Perhaps it's possible for tenants to have the security set in such a way that accessing those settings doesn't prompt for MFA. 🤷♂️