Removing Old Work Accounts from Your Phone

After your mailbox is migrated to the AIR tenant, the old work account is still cached on your phone in multiple places: Microsoft Authenticator, the Outlook Mobile app, OneDrive Mobile, Teams Mobile, and the phone's system Settings. Until those are cleared, you will get repeated sign-in prompts, MFA loops, and "account not found" errors.

This guide walks through the full phone cleanup. The whole thing takes about 10 minutes. Do this on every phone or tablet that was signed in to your old work account.

Before removing anything, sign out of each Microsoft app from inside the app itself. This makes the cleanup much cleaner than just deleting accounts.

• Microsoft Authenticator: open the app, tap your old account, then tap the gear icon and choose Remove account.
• Outlook Mobile: open the app, tap your profile icon, tap Settings, tap your old account, then tap Delete Account.
• OneDrive Mobile: open the app, tap your profile icon, tap Sign out.
• Teams Mobile: open the app, tap your profile icon, tap Settings, then Sign out.

iOS (iPhone, iPad)

• Open Settings.
• Go to Mail > Accounts (or Settings > Passwords & Accounts on older iOS).
• Tap your old work email account.
• Tap Delete Account at the bottom, then confirm.

Android

• Open Settings.
• Go to Accounts (or Passwords & accounts on some devices).
• Tap your work or school account (often shown with a briefcase icon or "Managed by...").
• Tap Remove account, then confirm.

Android caches Outlook account data even after you remove the account from the app. Clear it to be safe.

• Open Settings > Apps > See all apps.
• Find Outlook in the list and tap it.
• Tap Storage & cache.
• Tap Clear storage and confirm. (Clear cache only is not enough.)

A restart clears temporary memory and prevents the phone from auto-filling your old credentials when you next sign in. Do this even if everything seems fine.

Reopen the Microsoft apps and sign in fresh with your new AIR email address and password. Authenticator should prompt you to add a new work account when Outlook or Teams asks for MFA.

• Outlook Mobile: open the app and tap Get Started or Add Account. Enter your new email.
• OneDrive, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint: open each and sign in with your new email.
• Microsoft Authenticator: when Outlook or Teams prompts for MFA, allow Authenticator to add the new account. You can also manually add it by tapping the + icon and choosing Work or school account, then scanning the QR code.

• On iPhone, open Safari and go to https://login.microsoftonline.com directly (do not use office.com). Confirm you can sign in there with your new email. Clear any saved sign-in details for the old email.
• On Android, make sure you completed the Clear storage step. App-only sign-out is not enough.
• Make sure Microsoft Authenticator is showing your new account, not your old one. The old account should be removed entirely.
• If you still get sign-in loops, uninstall the offending app, restart the phone, and reinstall from the App Store or Play Store.
• Open a ticket with the help desk if the issue persists. They may need to clear an MDM enrollment or push a new policy.