Logging out and back in did not resolve it for me, but I I stumbled upon a solution last night that worked! This is after trying a dozen different approaches that did not work and nearly giving up.
My Xbox has a secondary account on it for my daughter as mentioned above, and this is part of the solution. I think anyone struggling with this issue still, at least on Xbox, should set up a secondary account on their console as it is both a useful work around and part of the solution I used. I’m not sure if you can set up a secondary account on the PC in the Xbox app, or what you’d do if you have a Steam version (I haven’t looked into this).
Here are the steps I followed:
- Create the secondary account on your xbox if you haven’t already. Send and accept a friend request from your primary to the secondary (you may have to switch back and forth or use the Xbox app on your phone to do this)
- Using the log in menu in the game, log into your secondary account (the primary account will remain active in the Xbox system menu to provide the game license)
- Load into the world with multiplayer active. I believe this puts the secondary account in Online status within the game world
- Exit the world back to the main menu and switch back to the primary account in the game menu
- Turn off Data/Online Functionality in settings
- Force quit game
- Restart game
- Activate Data/Online functionality
- Go to World Map
- You can try changing weather and time, but it still won’t stick (at least it didn’t for me)
- Click the icon with the single head. You’ll see your secondary account as active/online. Invite that account to Group. No need to accept the invite from that account. Stay on the primary one.
- Now the Group dropdown menu works. Go to it and select Leave Group.
- This reset everything for me.
I will provide updates if anything changes, but I have full functionality again.