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Cannot add member to the family group to share Microsoft 365 Family

Anonymous
2024-12-29T12:14:36+00:00

Hello,

I subscribed to Office 365 family to share the Office application with my family. All went pretty well adding my daughter account, and it was possible to properly install all the application on her PC.

On the other side, I cannot add my wife's account. Here is what happens:

  • I send the invitation
  • The invitation is received
  • Once my wife accepts the invitation, she cannot join the family group because an error window warns she is already member of another family group and she should first leave that one to join.

And here is the problem: indeed, my wife is member and organizer of a "test" family group we created several years ago and that we have never used. She is the organizer and the only other member is my daughter. In this case, my daughter's e-mail address is an old and not used one, different from the one working and used for my family group.

Now, regardless being the group organizer, my wife cannot remove herself or my "fake" daughter from the group. Trying to remove the daughter produces an error saying that only a group organizer can remove the account. But my wife IS the group organizer...

Of course, my wife cannot remove herself from the group because there is another member - the "fake" daughter - that anyway cannot be removed for what I have said before... The result is a nice dead-lock not allowing me to share Microsoft 365 with my wife.

Could anybody help, please?

I have had a chat with a Microsoft 365 expert who could not solve the issue and suggested me to post a message here.

Thanks.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Microsoft Family Safety | For home | Other

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-12-30T12:17:12+00:00

    Dear Giuseppe77YO,

    Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

    I understand that you would like to share your Microsoft 365 subscription with your wife, but when accepting the invitation it shows that you are already in another family group and can't opt out, I understand your frustration and will do my best to help you troubleshoot.

    I noticed that you seem to have chatted with support to troubleshoot the issue, but it seems to be a bit of a problem, so please rest assured that I will do my best.

    In order to better understand the status of the issue, I would like to confirm some information with you:

    • Are the members of your family group showing up correctly on the subscription screen of your current Microsoft account? Please note that the family group can be shared with up to 5 other people, so if you go beyond that, you may need to remove the other members before adding others. Microsoft account | Subscriptions
    • Are you able to view the information that a family group has been added in your wife's subscription screen? Microsoft account | Subscriptions

     

     

    • Is it possible to remove your ‘fake’ daughter's account from your wife's family group? If it is a child's account, please note the removal of a child's account:
    1. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner, and then click Manage Licence.

     

    1. On the next screen, select Remove Child Account Licence and then click OK on the next screen:

     

    • Does it prompt some error message when you are unable to remove it? If so, I hope you can share a screenshot with us, I think it will give us a clearer picture of the problem.

    I look forward to your further updates, and hope to learn more from you to confirm the direction of the problem for further investigation.

    Thank you for your understanding and patience, May this wonderful holiday season bring you happiness, peace, and cheer.

    Best regards

    Isabella-MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-12-30T18:23:13+00:00

    Dear Isabella,

    thanks a lot for your reply and the valuable information you provided. Actually, yesterday I could find a solution to my problem. Here are the steps I followed, in case that may be useful to somebody else in a similar situation:

    • I have tried to login using my daughter "old" e-mail address to check the family group from that perspective. Actually, it looked like the Microsoft login was disabled because of some "security" problem. Hence I recovered and re-enabled the related account.
    • After having done that, from my wife family group I could finally remove my "fake" daughter, using the "remove consent" option you mentioned. Please, note that before re-enabling my daughter's account, that option was not available at all.
    • Once my daughter's account was removed from my wife's family group, I could remove my wife from that group too.
    • At that moment, my wife was not belonging to any group anymore and I could add her to the "real" family group my daughter and I were already belonging to.

    It seems the problem was related to my daughter's old Microsoft account been disabled, not allowing here removal from my wife's family group.

    If I can give a little feed-back, a better error message would have made things much easier ;-) Indeed, the web interface was just telling me that my daughter's account could not be removed by the family group because only the family organizer could do it. But I was actually using the family organizer account (i.e., my wife account). That was a nice dead-lock!

    By the way, I could finally create my proper family group and I am now sharing the Microsoft 365 subscription with both my wife and daughter.

    I profit to wish you a happy new year!

    Thanks again,
    Giuseppe.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-31T04:25:53+00:00

    Dear Giuseppe77YO,

    Thank you for your reply.

    Also very happy that your issue has been resolved. I've marked your question as ‘Answered’ and hope this will help more users in the community who are experiencing similar issues to you. Thank you for sharing.

    Wish you a happy new year😊!

    Best regards

    Isabella-MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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