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

Anonymous
2017-09-06T18:12:13+00:00

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

Microsoft 365 and Office | Subscription, account, billing | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2018-01-31T22:51:17+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

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-05-28T18:14:25+00:00

    Almost 3 years now and this is still an issue. Either no one at Microsoft reads these forums and reports issues or they just don't care. But Microsoft can definitely pump out the "feature" updates that more often than not break something for at least one of the users at our office.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-05-28T17:11:36+00:00

    Just some feedback on this Reg entry fix\addition.  This fixed a problem for us that we were having where our users would have to sign into Word using their password EVERY time they signed into a new virtual session. The symptom was no recents listed and a warning icon on the logged in name on the upper right in Word. If the user went into the accounts section there was an error: “Fix Me”. When the user clicked on the fix me icon and then signed in using their password, all was well and recents could be seen. BUT, when the user signed out and then back into their instant clone virtual session, they had the “fix me” problem again!  Using this registry addition has resolved this problem for us!  Thank You!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-04-29T09:03:31+00:00

    olé Bruno!

    thats a good one.Thanks!

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-03-30T08:08:19+00:00

    Hi Bruno,

    Yes, I found that solution before and it seems to work :)

    No idea about your OneDrive issue, hopefully someone else can help.

    regards,

    Phil

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