Troubleshooting "We were unable to find any subscriptions associated with your account" errors in management portal

Dear Azure Community,

We are seeing a pattern of customers reporting that they sign in to the Azure management portal and then see a message indicating "We were unable to find any subscriptions associated with your account". That can certainly cause some understandable angst! But don't dismay, you just may have simply signed in to the wrong account.

Cause #1: Wrong account selected during sign-in

One of the common causes is that users are signing in with an account that is different than the account that their subscription is associated with. That is, they authenticate and sign in successfully, but the identity that they sign in with actually does not have access to any Azure subscriptions.

In particular, in October we launched new identity features and tighter integration between the Azure management portal and Azure Active Directory. As part of that, there is a new email-based disambiguation feature in place. When you sign in you are first prompted to enter your email address:

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

If the email-address you enter here is valid in only one identity namespace, you are then taken directly to the appropriate sign-in page to authenticate. But in the case that your email address is valid both as an Organizational identity and as a Microsoft account (MSA, formerly known as Windows Live ID), you are presented with a disambiguation dialog that looks like this:

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The problem is, if you make the wrong badge selection here it means you will get that alarming "No subscriptions" experience. Furthermore, many current users of Windows Azure today have signed up using their Microsoft account, and so the default selection of "Organizational account" is the wrong choice for those users. Just to confuse things further, the sign-in experience will helpfully remember your choice, and next time through the flow you are presented with only the last selected badge showing for that email address, even though you may have chosen an identity that doesn't have any Azure assets associated. Don't worry, in that case, there is an option to restore the missing badges that you can select.

So, in short, if you're confident that you have entered the email address of an account that is Service Administrator or co-administrator of an Azure subscription and you get the "No subscriptions" message, choose the sign-out option, and repeat the flow, this time selecting the correct badge (and look for that option to restore hidden choices).

Cause #2: You are the Account Administrator of the Subscription but not the Service Administrator

Only users who are either the Service Administrator or a co-administrator on the subscription can sign in to the management portal. If the Account Administrator has assigned a different user as the Service Administrator, that Account Admin will get the "No Subscriptions" experience if they sign into the management portal.

Solutions:

1. The Account Administrator can sign into the Azure accounts portal (https://account.windowsazure.com) and assign themselves as the Service Administrator
2. The Service Administrator or another co-admin can sign into the management portal and add the Account Administrator as a co-admin on the subscription

Cause #3: A problem with the subscription

(This is very rare)

In a very narrow set of cases, the Service Administrator of the subscription may have been locked out of the subscription. To repair, the Account Administrator should:

1. Sign into the accounts portal and choose the option to modify the subscription properties
2. Assign a different user as the Service Administrator temporarily
3. Restore the original user as Service Administrator

In roughly 90% of cases, the Account Administrator and Service Administrator are set to be the same user.

Cause #4: When adding a user as co-admin or assing a Service Administrator, the wrong identity was chosen

This is basically an inversion of case #1. Similar to signing in with an account that is valid both as an AAD organizational identity and as a Microsoft Account identity, when you are adding a co-administrator and the target email address is valid as both types of accounts, you will be presented with a disambiguation UI, assuming the appropriate conditions apply (see below).

The user adding another co-administrator in the management portal or an Account Administrator assigning a new Service Administrator in the accounts portal may make the wrong selection during disambiguation, leading the target user to sign-in and see the"no subscriptions" error.

If you sign in to the management portal using a Microsoft account, you may add co-admins who are:

• Other Microsoft account users
• If you are also a global directory administrator of an AAD directory, and that AAD directory is the one that is associated with your subscription(s), then you can add users from that directory as co-administrators. If you are not the global tenant admin, you are unable to add organizational identities to the subscription. Note that in the MSA case, the Account Administrator or Service Administrator can transfer the subscription to a different AAD directory if they are a global administrator of the directory (Settings->Subscriptions, Edit Directory in the portal).

If you sign in to the management portal using an AAD organizational identity, you may add co-admins who are:

• Microsoft account users
• Users in your AAD organizational directory

Cause #5: Invalid cookie state in the browser

I'm throwing this one in for good measure. Whenever you have sign-in issues, it's always a good idea to rule out some invalid state associated with your browser. Close all browser windows and then start an In-Private session (Internet Explorer) or go Incognito (Chrome) and sign in again. If you are able to sign in successfully that way and access your subscriptions, but you cannot do so otherwise, clear your cache and all cookies and that should resolve the issue for you. You might also try multiple computers from different locations to rule out proxy server or ISP issues.

Conclusion

We hope this posting helps you resolve your issue. If you continue to have issues after following these troubleshooting steps, please don't hesitate to contact customer support. If another user has access to the subscription, that user can sign in to open the support ticket (use the billing support option, which doesn't require a paid support plan). If that is not possible, telephone support may be your only option. The "No Subscriptions" dialog has a link to customer support phone numbers globally. You can refer the support personnel to this posting if necessary. Have your subscription ID and UPN (sign-in email address) ready.

Hope that helps!
-David Messner
Azure management portal team

Moderator: Please make this a sticky posting

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.