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Unable To Activate Microsoft Office 365 Mac

Feb 26, 2015  I've installed Office 2011 for mac which was downloaded from office 365 Portal. However, during installation process there was not a windows for activation (key or sign in method). Is there a way to force activation on Office 2011 for mac? Note: I've deleted office 365 com.microsoft.office.plist but i didn't get a windows for activation.

  1. I am unable to activate Office 365 on Mac. Opening Word or Excel, there is an activation window asking me to sign in. When I click the Sign In link, all I get is a white window. I expect to see fields.
  2. Aug 16, 2018  Microsoft Office appears to be experiencing activation issues on both Mac and PC today, according to several user reports on Twitter.

Microsoft announced that it has fixed an issue preventing Office 365 users from logging in or activating their Office 365 subscription. Apparently, the company had to face two different problems: Office 365 commercial users being unable to sign in to the cloud productivity suite, and consumers being unable to activate their Office 365 Personal and Home subscription in their Office apps.

We're investigating an issue in which users may be unable to sign-in to Office 365 and are receiving an error related to Office 365 subscription activation. More details can be found in the admin portal under MO146611.

— Office 365 Status (@Office365Status) August 16, 2018

We have been personally affected by the second issue over the past couple of weeks, with the Office apps not recognizing an active Office 365 subscription across several devices (Windows 10 PC, Mac, and even iOS). In our case, we can confirm that the situation is back to normal as of this writing. As noted by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Office 365 users on macOS may need to use the Office License Removal tool if Office 2016 for Mac still doesn’t recognize a valid Office 365 license.

Office 365 reached 100 million commercial active users last year, and Microsoft revealed during its latest financial results that it now has 31.4 million Office 365 consumer subscribers. Office has definitely become a core business for Microsoft, and the company can’t really afford to let its customers down and risking losing some to the competition from Google and others.

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Hello Andrea Maeda,


If I'm understanding you right, you're being asking to verify your license when using the Office 365 app that you downloaded from the Mac App Store. I'm happy to help you sort this out so you can start using that app the way you expected to.

Unable To Activate Microsoft Office 365 Mac Requirements


Have you purchased a copy of Office 365 previously? Although the apps that come with Microsoft Office 365 (i.e., Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) are free to download from the Mac App Store, you may have to purchase Office in order to activate them before you're able to use them. According to the Microsoft website, once you purchase Office you should be provided with a product key you can use to activate Office on your Mac. As you'll see in the description section of the Microsoft Office 365 app in the Mac App Store, Office 365 offers annual subscriptions that can be billed to your App Store account. You should be able to view more information about all of this here: Microsoft - Office install. If you need more help with activating Microsoft Office 365, reach out to Microsoft using the 'contact us' link at the bottom of that website.


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