Microsoft Online Account and Email Issues

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allan

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#250719 22-May-2019 18:50

@nathan or any other Microsoft people who might be able to find someone to assist, this issue has been driving me crazy for a day and a half now and I've had four live chats and two phone calls with Microsoft and am no closer to a resolution. What I have discovered, is that Microsoft support teams seem to work in completely siloed environments and despite my being given ticket numbers and links to live chat transcripts to "pass onto the next team", no one is able to able to access another team's support tickets. "Sir you have given me an 8 digit number, I need a a 10 digit number", "I know you have given me a link for the chat transcript sir, but I cannot see anything at that link" grrr...!!!

I have been through the Office 365 for desktop suites team, the Outlook mobile support team (who seemed to understand exactly the issue, but couldn't help), the Accounts and Billing Team and two different 0800 numbers for Commercial support.

Background:
In conjunction with an Office 365 Home subscription, I also have what was once known as a Windows Live Custom Domain which allowed me to use my personal domain (somename.co.nz) with the Microsoft Hotmail/Outlook.com service and set up personalised email accounts for family for that domain, providing me with a full Exchange/Activesync based email service. Even although it was grandfathered back in 2014, it has continued to work just fine on desktop Outlook, web based Outlook and Android (both Outlook and Samsung email client) - until yesterday.

Yesterday, I used my email address to sign up for the Microsoft PowerApps Community Plan, which is free for individual use, and which I thought would be useful to investigate (as we geeky types are wont to do). As part of the sign-up process, it has created a second separate Microsoft "work" account login and broken my Microsoft Account authentication as used by Outlook.com, stopping my email from syncing in both the Samsung Galaxy email app and Outlook for Android. Removing those accounts and attempting to recreate, just results in "account not found messages" on my phone. While I have one existing functioning desktop Outlook connection on a PC, any attempt to use desktop Outlook to create an account on another machine also results in "account not found". If I use a web browser to https://outlook.live.com, then I see both a personal account and work/school account choice being offered.

I can't log a support ticket from within the PowerApps web page, because despite creating me an account, the support page says I haven't subscribed - and logging in again from that page just circles me round and round.

Frankly at this stage, I don't really care about PowerApps, I just want the Work/School account removed and get my email working, but no one has been able to provide assistance as to how to do this. I'm really hoping some Microsoft representative reads this and can get someone to help.

gbwelly

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#2243306 22-May-2019 19:24

Are you confident you have created a 'Work or School' account and not the other way around? You may have done the opposite as you won't be asked this question unless you have both associated with the same email address. Try logging into both account.microsoft.com selecting 'Personal' and portal.office.com with the Work or School account. Once you are sure which type your original one was you could try moving the new one off to a different email address/UPN. If you can get into either of course. Good luck.

allan

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#2243324 22-May-2019 19:57

gbwelly: Are you confident you have created a 'Work or School' account and not the other way around? You may have done the opposite as you won't be asked this question unless you have both associated with the same email address. Try logging into both account.microsoft.com selecting 'Personal' and portal.office.com with the Work or School account. Once you are sure which type your original one was you could try moving the new one off to a different email address/UPN. If you can get into either of course. Good luck.

I am 100% certain which way round it was. I've had the personal account for many many years. It was part and parcel of the original Windows Live Domains setup. As I documented above, it was registering for the PowerApps Community plan with the same email address that created the Work/School account. Email issues began the moment that happened.

Going to account.microsoft.com logs me correctly into my personal account (without providing a Personal vs Home/School choice), although there is no option on that page headed "Personal", but it shows details of Office 365 Home subscription, Devices, Payment & Billing etc.
Going to portal.office.com does present a choice between Personal vs Home/School for login. If I choose "Home/School", it then takes me to a Dynamics365 page and displays an error of:

No instances found for this user ID
You have signed in with a user ID that cannot log into Dynamics 365. Contact your administrator to make sure that you have a valid Dynamics 365 user account.
Tenant Administrator false

There are no other options on that page apart from Sign Out

So I think you are onto something, just not sure what 🙂

gbwelly

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#2243397 23-May-2019 07:29

Sounds like the next challenge is to find a way to manage the Azure AD (Work or School) account. Problem is, it doesn't sound like you have a subscription to access a management interface to do so. Another place you can manage that type of user is https://portal.azure.com in the Azure AD interface. Once you are successfully signed in at account.microsoft.com with your personal login, can you then move over to outlook.com and see your email? Normal behaviour would be yes. This might get you a back door way in to tide you over.

You could also try signing in as the work or school account, then using that to sign up for an Azure trial, to allow you to access the Azure AD management interface. The 'Tenant Administrator false' is ominous, as it implies that even if you can get into the management interface you wont be able to change it anyway. I think you are going to have to keep leaning on Microsoft Support to clean up this skid mark. Tell them you have a duplicate Microsoft ID and Azure AD account, and that the Azure AD account is in a Microsoft managed tenant.

I signed into PowerApps with my Azure AD account and was able to navigate to All Apps->People. Then I can click my profile in the top right and click My Account. Then clicking Personal info takes me to a page where I would potentially be able to edit my info. You could try that?

Again, good luck, you are in a pretty good pickle.

allan

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#2250874 4-Jun-2019 09:45

Just providing an update on this issue. I'm now up to my eighth interaction with various forms of support at Microsoft, but at least have a case open that I am persisting with (although after each exchange, I get an automated email saying the case is closed. "Just ignore that sir, it's how the system works"). Have also engaged with the MS OfficeSupport Twitter account who have DMed me a couple of times to see if the issue is resolved yet. Also tried engaging Diane Poremsky at slipstick.com, but that avenue seems to have come to nothing.

@gbwelly, thanks for your suggestions but I don't seem to be able to do anything by way of managing the Azure AD setup. It seems as if half of a setup was done as part of the PowerApps sign up, but because I don't really have a commercial Office 365 account, I don't have any admin rights.

The current state of play is that I have asked for the "Work/School" to be deleted and it seems as if an escalation is happening to get that done.

Boy it's hard work dealing with support in a large organisation across multiple timezones.