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

2019-03-26T05:14:19+00:00

Thanks WendyPark appreciate the update. Will definitely try the Mojave upgrade hope it works for me. Been ignoring it for a while now didn't know it was the solution to my problem. Meanwhile Microsoft need to be more efficient in resolving such an issue which can be very frustrating to a user.
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Anonymous

2019-03-26T14:29:26+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion. Only problem is that my machine is sufficiently old that it us unable to be upgraded to Mojave... With that said, it is still plenty fast and capable, it's just about 8 years old.

In the event MFST has been using machines with Mojave, it would certainly make sense that they are unable to replicate this issue. I am using Sierra at the moment to retain compatibility with a few software items. It sounds like this is still an issue on High Sierra though...

The shocking part to me is that I've now downloaded and installed not one but two Office Insider (Fast) updates, yet neither one of them has addressed any of this issue. How hard can this possibly be to fix, and what other issues are they fixing that are so much more important than customers literally being unable to connect their files or activate the products they have paid for?

Other than the activation issue, my Office install has been working just fine. So it really does escape me as to what other unknown bugs are being fixed, all while this massive issue remains unsolved.

I get it: these things can take time. But it would seem that 3 weeks+ is sufficiently long for this to be solved. I'll continue to wait patiently, but I'm getting tired of using Excel Online...
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Anonymous

2019-03-27T01:16:58+00:00

The latest version of Office 2019 is supposed to work on the most current mac os which is mojave 10.14 and upto two previous versions 10.13 and 10.12. I think that installing the latest version of Office 2019 viz. 16.23 makes it somehow not to activate with macos 10.12 and 10.13 even though it is supposed to. This makes me wonder how the software was tested, accepted and released to the market.

One of the agents even tried office 16.20 with mac 10.12 and it didn’t work. It was only after upgrading to mojave that I was able to activate the office suite.
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