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
    2017-10-03T09:48:42+00:00

    Hi Leona,

    Thanks for reporting this issue, the related team is working on it. I've sent you a PM to request the related information.

    Meanwhile, please answer some questions for our reference:

    a. Please confirm re-installing Office didn't help.

    b. Confirm if another Windows profile doesn't encounter this issue.

    c. Please share your Office client version.

    d. By saying "Whenever i key in the email", are you able to input the password?

    Thanks,

    Jim

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-10-03T03:31:53+00:00

    Hi Microsoft!

    I am facing the same issue. I cannot login into my microsoft desktop apps using my school account. Whenever i key in the email, it will disappear and refresh the login page again. 

    Please help.

    Thank you.

    Best regards,

    Leona

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-10-02T22:21:18+00:00

    Hi Benoit,

    Thanks for the update. Please also let the related team know regarding this when they contact you via the email you provided.

    Regards,

    Sheen

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-10-02T09:12:58+00:00

    Hello Jim,

    One more thing to add (and can be shared) :

    I tried a fresh install and a login on my domain. As I have a roaming profile, I get all documents and stuff back (the "roaming" part of the profile). I got no problem with this configuration. So the problem might be related to the "local" part of the profile (AppData\Local).

    I can try this by deleting my current profile (only the local part of the profile will be lost -- which is not the most important one)

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