Can't sign in to Office 365 Personal: Mac, new installation

Anonymous

Problem: When I try to sign in, I get a spinner forever saying "Loading..."

Details: I installed Office 365 Personal on a Mac. When I start Word, it asks for my email, which I entered successfully. But then the window shows just the spinner and "Loading..." and never asks for the password. I tried rebooting. I tried Word and Excel. I can log in successfully with this id on office.com on the same computer, so the network and account work. I tried Ethernet (which is very slow) and WiFi. No error messages show up, just the spinner for minutes. The only unusual factor I can think of is the Mac previously had Office 2004 installed.

Any suggestions? I'm kind of stuck. I searched the web for solutions but didn't come across anything that helped.

Thanks.

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Anonymous

Hi All,

I did some further testing with this and was able refine the process. I was able to sign out and back in half a dozen times. Each time when I signed out and then signed backed, the “loading” window would still appear, so this doesn't fix that error.

[Note1] Turn off Two-step verification if it is enabled. In a browser go to your Microsoft account, and then to the security menu to disable it.

Steps are as follows:

Open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
Select the Sign in or Activate button.
Enter info in "Sign In" field [Email, phone, or Skype] if not already populated.
Press 'Return' Key or 'Next' Button. The loading window will then appear with the spinner.

~~5. Click the mouse in the windo~~~~w.~~ I found this step was unnecessary.

Just type your password, followed by pressing the 'Return' Key. After a few seconds, your office should be activated or signed-in.

[Note2] Turn off Two-step verification back on if desired. In a browser go to your Microsoft account, and then to the security menu to enable it.

I hope these instructions are clear enough to follow.

-Mike-

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Anonymous

Hi All,

Sorry for the inconvenience the issue causes. And we really appreciate all your effort and time for reporting this issue. We are aware of the issue now. Here we'd like to share a summary for the issue here which will benefit other community members.

We have been receiving multiple threads having similar issues caused by sign in issue on Office for Mac.

Users may not be able to sign in to Office applications, or meet error message when you want to save changes for files stored in OneDrive for SharePoint Online locations within from Office apps.

The possible scenarios:

You may see a spinner forever saying “loading” when you try to sign in.

Issue Environment:

The issue happens to any latest OS version 10.12.6/10.13.6/10.14.3

The issue happens to both the latest 16.16.8 and 16.23.

Workaround:

Thanks for Mike's reply and other community members confirming that the issue should be caused by the stuck sign in window not showing page content well. If you type password when you see the loading window then press enter, and wait for a little, then you should be able to sign in well. For detailed information, please check Mike's reply as another mark answer post.

Assessment:

Thanks for all your effort and time on this issue. Several customers have confirmed that updating to the latest 16.24 version can fix this issue. In the meantime, I am informed from the related team that the latest 16.25 insider version should fix the issue.

Please aware that the insider version is best for Insiders who want to use the very earliest builds to identify issues and provide feedback about new features still in development. Insider is ideal for those who don't mind the bit of risk involved in using unsupported builds.

If you don’t mind, you can go to Help > Check for updates > tick the join the insider version option and update to 16.25 to see the result.

Any updates will be appreciated. Sorry for the inconvenience the issue causes again.

Thanks,

Rena

[Updated by Rena Yu MSFT, 21:33 May 2, 2019(UTC)]

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239 additional answers

Anonymous

2019-09-03T13:08:49+00:00

Hi Mike

Many thanks for your advice to type my Microsoft Office 365 for Mac password, followed by 'Return' while the 'Loading" window (with its incessant spinning wheel) were showing.

At first I thought if hadn't worked as I hadn't typed the password into a Microsoft dialogue box which I was hoping would appear, but after a minute or so, the 'Loading' page disappeared and I found I could open all of my previously inaccessible Word 2016 documents again.

Hallelujah! What a relief! I have spent days trying to work out how to get the 'Activate' function to work, without success. So glad I stumbled over this thread.

Yesterday I spent over an hour on the phone to a friendly Microsooft technician who wasn't successful at activating my Office 2016 Word or Excel documents either.

While my Word documents have been inaccessible I've found I could open some of them using Open Office, Another strategy was to do my word processing using Mac Pages. Both stopgap measures. I'm so happy that I can now resume using my Word templates and can open and edit my Word documents.

Since the successful Activation, I've noticed the appearance of each Word doc created in the past few days looks different, with a white rectangular icon next to the document name, rather than the usual Word icon. The document still opens as a Word doc though,

In my case I am wondering if Microsoft's 'Activate' message problem may have originated when, in the past week, my MacBook Pro, (OS X El Capitan Vers 10.11.6), had the logic board replaced and the RAM re-seated. Perhaps after those repairs Microsoft couldn't recognise that the laptop had Office 365 for Mac installed?

The Microsoft technician had suggested that if the laptop's operating system was upgraded to Version 10.12 or greater then the Activation would work.

Having followed your advice this will not be necessary. Hope the "Activate' problem is now solved & the process won't need to be repeated when the laptop is re-started.

Thanks again.

Chris Carroll

Australia
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Anonymous

2019-08-27T12:42:51+00:00

Thank you so much! This was taking hours out of my day and I am so pleased that I found this thread. :)
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Anonymous

2019-08-22T16:24:13+00:00

Good for me too!

I suspect that the problem is triggered when you enter a wrong password the first time.
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