Why is my Microsoft / Office365 account in a stopped or invalid state?

Accounts can become stopped or invalid due to the refresh token or the password being invalid.

Basic password (Outlook / Hotmail accounts).

• If the account continuously goes invalid after logging in:
• • Enable 2FA on your MS account
  • Or you can use APP passwords

Refresh tokens (OAuth accounts / O365) can be invalidated by several events such as:

• User's password has changed since the refresh token was issued.
• An administrator can apply conditional access policies that restrict access to resources.

To determine what is causing tokens to be revoked the mail administrator needs to:

• If using O365 / Azure, go to Monitor > Logins  - this will inform them why access was revoked.
• Typically there will be a conditional access policy. Ask the mail admin to create a policy for your application that is NOT restrictive and has long session timeouts.

Resources:

Troubleshooting why an account has stopped or invalid

Microsoft article regarding refresh tokens 

Updated April 24, 2024 18:47