Office 2016 For Mac Keeps Asking To Activate

Office 2016 for mac keeps asking to activate account

Had a situation that seems to be fairly common – get laptop, uninstall “Get Office” program, install Office 2016 and activate using KMS server, which seems to work fine. Then when you fire up one of the programs you get the “Lets get started” screen. You can close this and it works ok, but it is annoying.

If you want to activate volume license editions of Office 2016, Visio 2016, or Project 2016 with a KMS host or Active Directory-Based activation, you need to first install Office 2016 Volume License Pack. When an Office 2016 volume edition client is installed, it will automatically attempt to activate via either Active Directory by using its. Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac keeps asking me to activate it. This is the subscription based software, but the applications are installed locally on the machines (meaning, it should work even if the machine is not connected to the internet). To resolve this issue in Outlook 2016 for Mac, install the February 2017 Outlook update (version 15.31.0) from the following Office website: Release notes for Office 2016 for Mac. To work around this issue, delete any cached passwords for your account, and also delete any modern authentication tokens from the keychain.

To fix this see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3170450 (deleting a couple of registry keys that make Office think it’s still in OEM mode).

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeMicrosoftOffice16.0CommonOEM

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOffice16.0CommonOEM

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Symptoms

In Microsoft Outlook 2016 for Mac, you are repeatedly prompted for authentication while you're connected to your Office 365 account.

Cause

This issue occurs because of the presence of duplicate tokens in the keychain.

Office 2016 For Mac Keeps Asking To Activate

Resolution

To resolve this issue in Outlook 2016 for Mac, install the February 2017 Outlook update (version 15.31.0) from the following Office website:

Workaround

To work around this issue, delete any cached passwords for your account, and also delete any modern authentication tokens from the keychain. To do this, follow these steps.

Note

Office 2016 For Mac Keeps Asking To Activate Password

These steps affect all Office applications that use modern authentication.

Activate Office 2016 Without Microsoft Account

  1. Quit Outlook and all other Office applications.

  2. Start Keychain Access by using one of the following methods:

    • Select the Finder application, click Utilities on the Go menu, and then double-click Keychain Access.
    • In Spotlight Search, type Keychain Access, and then double-click Keychain Access in the search results.

  3. In the search field in Keychain Access, enter Exchange.

  4. In the search results, select each item to view the Account that's listed at the top, and then press Delete. Repeat this step to delete all items for your Exchange account.

  5. In the search field, enter adal.

  6. Select all items whose type is MicrosoftOffice15_2_Data:ADAL:<GUID>, and then press Delete.

  7. In the search field, enter office.

  8. Select the items that are named Microsoft Office Identities Cache 2 and Microsoft Office Identities Settings 2, and then press Delete.

  9. Quit Keychain Access.

    Note

    When you start Outlook, you are prompted to authenticate.