The case: Issues with switching organizations in Microsoft Teams client

I have been battling with an issue involving an stale (non-existing) Work account in my Teams client, and some of the trouble it caused me.

The issue in Microsoft Teams

As a freelancer I’m often added to different Organizations. I use them to connect and gain access to applications and/or services that are part of my tasks.

But, I also have few accounts that belong to the Organizations. I have to work with those, due to specific Governance and Security rules they have in place.

In essence, the structure of the accounts I use are mainly Work type, and the Personal account I sued to access the Microsoft MVP and MCT resources (Teams Channels) and collaborate with peers. Everything was ‘love and happiness’ trough a single, MFA backed up process in the same Teams client.

The issue appeared, few weeks back, when one of the Organizational account I was assigned, was decommissioned. I had been assigned a new account (new domain/tenant). It happened quickly, almost without notice, the account I already used was obsolete (tenant deleted). This caused some strain on my Teams activities, such has:

• The old account was always there – it is close to impossible to remove stale account from Microsoft Teams
• Some times it caused the client to lag (i.e. while joining a Teams call session), or become non-responsive
• There were constant reminders (yellow sign with exclamation) that something was wrong with one of the accounts.

All in all, it was a productivity show stopper. But, being busy with projects/trainings, I kinda postponed the process of removal.

The solution (or at least this is what I thought it was)

At first, I realized that removing an non-existent account is a bigger problem than I originally perceived. For starters, the authentication/authorization process does not work (Duh!). So none of the usual things work – leaving an organization, logging out of the account, removing the account, etc.

Then I realized that the account is almost ‘hard coded’ to the client. Login off is not an option (see previous paragraph). I tried The Internet, heck I even tried Copilot, and it all came down to deleting the cache folder in Microsoft Teams on the desktop.

2. Open the Run dialog (press Win + R) and enter C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe and then press OK.

3. Delete all files and folders in the Teams directory.

4. Restart the Teams application.

For more advanced users, the ‘hack’ was to use Registry Editor (especially if the previous thing did not work):

2. Open the Run dialog and type regedit, and then press OK.

3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Teams

Note:

Be careful when working with the Registry Editor. If You don’t know what you are doing, you can cause damage to the system. If you’re unsure, seek assistance from someone with experience in using the Registry Editor.

In my case, purging the cache (kinda) worked. I did combine it with the registry editing (removed all mentions of the stale account). The problem I got afterwards was inability to switch between tenants in Microsoft Teams, with my personal account. It just kept going to Teams Personal client, and I could not switch to the Microsoft tenant.

The solution that worked

The only place I had issue with the Teams app switching between tenants was on my laptop. When accessing Microsoft tenant trough the browser and the mobile app, there was no issue. And then it ‘hit’ me – it is the modern authentication issue.

If users aren’t signed in to their Microsoft work or school account anywhere else, when they start Teams, they’re asked to provide either single-factor or multi-factor authentication (SFA or MFA). Since I purged the cache this information was lost (had to sing to the accounts again), but my Authenticator app was not aware of this.

The solution was to perform reset on the device notification. In my case I used Microsoft Authenticator app, so the process is as follows:

2. Click on the affected account (in my case my Microsoft MVP account)

3. Click on Reset device notifications and confirm the choice

Once I restarted the Microsoft Teams application on my laptop. At this point I had both my Work and Personal account there. Once I switched between tenants, I went trough the sing-in process (with MFA). and tenant switching was up and running. 🙂 Now there I no issues with me keep using Personal account in Microsoft Teams client and switching tenants.