Microsoft 365 forced me to change my password, which normally wouldn't be a big deal. However, the password-change form accepts pasted text for the old password but blocks pasting the new one. I manage accounts across several hundred tenants, so manually typing every generated password is impractical. Password-manager autofill also isn't consistently reliable across all of these environments. Is there a reasonable workaround, or a better way to handle these password changes at scale?
4 Answers
A hardware security key can reduce how often you need to enter passwords, especially when MFA is involved, but it won’t necessarily solve the initial password-change form. The more sustainable approach is to standardize the account lifecycle and use a password manager or scripted onboarding process that supports your tenant workflow.
Password managers can still work well here, but you may need to use their keyboard-based auto-type feature rather than normal form detection. Tools such as KeePass can send the username and password keystrokes directly, which often works even when a page blocks clipboard pasting.
For managing accounts across many tenants, it may be worth looking at delegated administration and centralized tools such as GDAP, Lighthouse, or CIPP instead of handling every account individually. Also, if these are ordinary user accounts, forced periodic password expiration is generally discouraged; strong unique passwords and MFA are usually preferable.
That makes more sense. A separate onboarding workflow for those emergency accounts could avoid repeatedly dealing with the web form.
A browser extension designed to force pasting into blocked fields can work around this kind of restriction. It’s not ideal that the site blocks paste in the first place, but a trusted, locally installed extension may be the simplest short-term fix.
Those tools are already part of our process. The password changes are mainly for setting up initial credentials on break-glass accounts.