Low severityauthentication
Power BI Error:
AADSTS120016, User Not Found for Self-Service Password Reset
What does this error mean?
Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) failed because the user account could not be found in Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD).
Common causes
- 1Username or UPN entered during password reset does not exist in Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) — typo or wrong domain suffix
- 2User is an on-premises Active Directory account that is not synced to Entra ID via Entra Connect (or sync is broken)
- 3User is not in scope of the SSPR policy — SSPR is enabled for a specific group and this user is not a member
- 4Account was recently deleted, soft-deleted, or moved to another tenant
- 5User is a guest (B2B) account — SSPR for guests requires the home tenant, not the resource tenant
How to fix it
- 1Verify the exact UPN/email at https://entra.microsoft.com → Users → All users; confirm spelling and domain suffix match what was typed on the reset screen
- 2If the user exists on-premises only, check Entra Connect Health: confirm the account is in scope of the sync rules and that the last sync cycle succeeded (Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Delta)
- 3In Entra ID → Protection → Password reset → Properties, confirm SSPR is set to 'All' or that the user is a member of the selected group; also check 'Registration' to ensure auth methods are registered
- 4For guest/B2B users, instruct them to reset their password in their home tenant (passwords.microsoft.com signed in with their home account), not the resource tenant
- 5If the account was recently deleted, restore it within 30 days from Entra ID → Deleted users; after that the object is permanently gone and must be recreated