Authenticator failed to add account on Android: failed to set up notification approvals and one time password code

Question

Hi there,

I have issue on adding work account in my authenticator, Android phone.
If I sign in manually, it would show "failed to set up notification approvals and one time password code."
Screenshot below please:

and if I sign in with QR code, it would show error too, screenshot:

However, I signed in successfully in my ipad, and works well, so I think there is no issue on my account.
I suppose it may related to Android, google setting with authenticator.

Besides, I have uninstall and reinstall the authenticator several times and even reset my phone to factory data, it keeps showing above error. Also tried on my old Android phone, it went to the same errors.

Kindly help with this issue, thanks!

Authenticator version: 6.2202.0982

Answer 1

I have exactly the same issue which occured after installing the Authenticator on a fresh Android profile.
After removing the working office365 work account on my existing Android profile and re-adding the account into Authenticator I ran into the very same issue again.
Now I have two Android profiles without functioning push notifications.

Authenticatior version: 6.2208
Android 12 on OnePlus Nord with multi-profile enabled
Prefered 2FA method: Push notification

Answer 2

I was receiving the same error message on a new Android work phone when trying to add my 2FA entry to the Microsoft Authenticator for my work MS account.

Before trying to add my new phone, I already had two Android devices with the 2FA account working.

For me, the solution was to navtigate to https://mysignins.microsoft.com/security-info/ and remove my old phone from being one of my 2FA devices. Note, I still had a second phone listed and I am wondering if there's therefore some limit set my organisation or MS that limits it to two devices being allowed at a time.

Once I'd done the above, with the MS Authenticator app reset on my new work phone ('App Info' > 'Storage and cache' clear the cache and data), I used the prompts on the same webpage I link above to walk through the steps to add a new device including by scanning the QR code to add it, and that time it worked successfully and added the 2FA entry to my new work phone.

Hope this helps someone else out, I'd be interested to confirm it either way! I am not 100% sure if my fix was due to needing to remove one of the two current active devices for 2FA before I could add a new one AND/OR using that webpage as the prompt to generate the QR code to scan to activate 2FA (rather than just signing in via the app on the phone to try and add it).