Unable to sign-in to Office 2016 desktop apps. Sign-in disappears after entering Office 365 account email address

Anonymous

I am helping someone in our Office 365 tenant with a strange sign-in problem that affects only his Windows profile, and the issue is NOT in the Credential Manager.

This is his home computer running Windows 10 Home, build 1703. He is running the latest Office 2016 (installed the click to run apps from Office 365)

The problem began after he changed his Office 365 password. He can sign-in to the Web apps on another computer, and he can sign into Office 2016 apps on the same computer using a different Windows profile. For the problematic profile he signs into Windows using his personal Microsoft account. Then he signs into Outlook and Office 2016 with his Office 365 for Business account. Shouldn't be a problem...I do the same thing at home. The issue is that Outlook, Word, Excel, etc. will prompt him to sign in. When he enters his Office 365 email address (UPN), the sign-in screen immediately disappears without prompting him for a password. The sign in fails and Outlook says "Disconnected... need password)."

The first thing I checked was Credential Manager, because that is usually the issue for things like this. We removed everything Microsoft or Office related from credential manager. It didn't help. Then we removed everything from credential manager, and it still didn't help. Repairing and then reinstalling office did not help.

I know that the problem is in his Windows profile, because he can sign-in just fine on the secondary Windows profile we created. So my question is this:

What do I need to delete from the registry and/or from the C:\users\username\appdata folder to resolve this issue with his Windows profile?

Thank you,

Sean

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Anonymous

after the first attempt by Microsoft, which seemed to have worked for me, after a couple of days, the issue returned.

This time, they asked me to try something else which is to force some kind of different login screen for the O365 account in Office 2016.

This is what I did (and since a couple of weeks, I have had no issues):

Go to the registry editor (Win+R; regedit)

go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft ->Office -> 16.0 ->Common -> Identity

Inside "Identity", create a new REG_DWORD value called "EnableADAL" and leave the value at 0

Restart the PC and try again to login from Office 2016. In my case, the logon screen was now different and it worked perfectly.

Hope this helps you

Thanks,

Bruno Sales

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101 additional answers

Anonymous

2018-03-13T09:53:19+00:00

Just wanted to add - I was also having this issue with a user. Following the instructions to disconnect and re-connect the account under Windows Settings resolved the issue.
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Anonymous

2018-03-10T16:54:47+00:00
Lessons Learned from my side after browsing several blogs:

If you have an AD domain connected O365 account, make sure that you DO NOT connect your AD domain, e.g. "contoso.com" AD domain account to your Microsoft (work or school) account *** Email address is removed for privacy ***.

In Windows 10, go to

Settings --> Accounts --> Access work and school accounts

Click Disconnect only for your Microsoft (work or school) account:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***. Make sure you are only connected to AD domain account: "contoso.com"

Click Connect

Sign in with O365 credentials

Enter E-Mail

Enter Password

Skip connection to Windows

Proceeding this way, I think your credentials are always grasped from (Azure) AD, not from a locally identity. *hope so at least*

Best regards,

Markus

[The information is masked by the moderator]
Thank you! This was causing me a world of pain following a domain join, couldn't get any accounts added to Outlook - this solved my problem.
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Anonymous

2018-03-10T16:37:18+00:00

;)

to be fair, it was the Microsoft support that helped me. I just posted the solution online so that others could be helped without several iterations with the support team

I get satisfaction from having helped you - no need for beers ;)
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Anonymous

2018-03-10T16:31:54+00:00

Hi

after the first attempt by Microsoft, which seemed to have worked for me, after a couple of days, the issue returned.

This time, they asked me to try something else which is to force some kind of different login screen for the O365 account in Office 2016.

This is what I did (and since a couple of weeks, I have had no issues):

Go to the registry editor (Win+R; regedit)

go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft ->Office -> 16.0 ->Common -> Identity

Inside "Identity", create a new REG_DWORD value called "EnableADAL" and leave the value at 0

Restart the PC and try again to login from Office 2016. In my case, the logon screen was now different and it worked perfectly.

Hope this helps you

Thanks,

Bruno Sales

Bruno, you are a wizard! I just dealt with this two days running. First day, 4 hours, no success, then got on the phone with O365 support and as they were logging the ticket, something I'd done fixed it...until today. Just spent another hour and a half on it, then found this post (missed it earlier), and had myself fixed in SECONDS (doesn't even take a reboot)!

THIS is the solution that we've all been looking for. No profile rebuilding, no credential manager flush, no Office reinstall...just 10 seconds in regedit.

Give me a way, and I will buy you a beer. Two beers. TEN beers. Thank you!
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