Access Denied when connecting to Office 365 using Powershell
The other day I had a really annoying, tear-your-hair-out kind of problem with using Powershell to Administer Office 365.
I had an administrative user account called CogmotiveReports@mycompany.onmicrosoft.com but every time I tried to log on to Office 365 using Powershell it through an Access Denied error like this:
WARNING: Your connection has been redirected to the following URI: "https://pod51031psh.outlook.com/PowerShell-LiveID?PSVersion=2.0 " [pod51014psh.outlook.com] Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : Access is denied. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic. + CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.Manageme....RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [], PSRemotingTransportException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PSSessionOpenFailed Import-PSSession : Cannot validate argument on parameter 'Session'. The argument is null. Supply a non-null argument and try the command again. At C:\connect-ps.ps1:5 char:22 + Import-PSSession <<<< $Session + CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (:) [Import-PSSession], ParameterBindingValidationException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentValidationError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ImportPSSessionCommand
I could log into the Microsoft Office portal without any problems, so it wasn’t a permissions or username and password error.
A lot of Googling later I came across a Microsoft Office 365 community forum thread where someone else had the same problem. They had found a solution to the problem, which was to change the UPN. I changed my UPN to CogmotiveReports@domain.com and it worked first time!
When I changed the UPN back to CogmotiveReports@mycompany.onmicrosoft.com it stopped working again. What a pain!
So, we have a work around – but it didn’t help me work out why I had the problem in the first place. I did some more digging and troubleshooting and came across the MSOL Deleted Users section. I found the same account in the MSOL User Recycle Bin. I had totally forgotten that I had deleted this account a week ago and re-created it with the same UPN.
PS C:\> Get-MsolUser -ReturnDeletedUsers UserPrincipalName DisplayName isLicensed ----------------- ----------- ---------- CogmotiveReports@alantest3.onmicroso... Service Account for Cogmotive Reports False
I force removed the deleted user in Powershell and verified that it no longer came up when I ran the Get-MSOLUser -ReturnDeletedItems cmdlet.
PS C:\> Remove-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName CogmotiveReports@alantest3.onmicrosoft.com -RemoveFromRecycleBin Confirm Continue with this operation? [Y] Yes [N] No [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is "Y"): y PS C:\> Get-MsolUser -ReturnDeletedUsers PS C:\>
Now the account works perfectly.
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