Medium severityauthentication
Power BI Error:
AADSTS160021
What does this error mean?
The application requested a specific user session in Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) that no longer exists or was never established.
Common causes
- 1The app's authorization request includes a session_id parameter referencing a session that has already been terminated or expired
- 2User signed out of Microsoft Entra ID in another tab while the app still held a reference to the old session
- 3Stale browser cookies or cached tokens pointing to a session that no longer exists on the Entra ID side
- 4Multiple Microsoft accounts in the same browser causing the requested session to mismatch the active one
- 5Application incorrectly reusing a session_id across tenants or after a tenant-level sign-out event
How to fix it
- 1Sign out completely from all Microsoft accounts at https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/logout and close all browser tabs
- 2Clear cookies and site data for login.microsoftonline.com and login.live.com, then restart the browser
- 3Retry sign-in in a private/incognito window to rule out stale session cookies
- 4If the error reproduces, inspect the auth request: remove any hardcoded session_id or sid parameter and let Entra ID establish a fresh session
- 5For embedded Power BI or custom apps: ensure your MSAL/ADAL configuration does not cache a session_id beyond its lifetime — switch to acquireTokenSilent with proper fallback to interactive auth