Why does signing out suddenly de-activate office?

Thanks for your reply. I agree with the fact that you need internet access, but should that necessitate continuous signing in with your account on all MS Office apps even after you installed them? I don't use One-drive and I'm happy to manually update Office and even sign-in to update office apps at that moment when I'm manually updating Office. It just bugs me a little to be continuously signed in with my account so that others using my device in my family have to use my account when they want to use Office.

I'll just have to hope that more people will vote for the suggestion that was made on https://word.uservoice.com/forums/304924-word-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/40499542-require-option-to-remain-signed-out-of-office-accoHope it will be picked up by MS.

Yes Stefan that is the "official" party line.  It is what I've been telling people for years. It is what I was prepared to tell them, until I made a WAG and tried signing out of 365 and starting a program.  At which point I said OOPS!

But I was able to at least partially confirm DDkDDK's experience that the official documentation does not work TODAY. It may have still been that way yesterday, but not today. 

.

"Officially" I am supposed to be able to run my 365 licensed program from my desktop without signing in. I would lose the AI specific functions, but most functions would continue to work. I know it USED to work that way. I used to OFTEN not sign in to 365 right away after restarting my computer.  But TODAY I could not do that. Windows could no longer find the 365 program code at all! Even after doing an Office Repair.

SOMETHING has CHANGED!

In typical MS fashion they have made an "improvement" without any advance notice and are waiting for public reaction.

Several people have suggested that there has been a change. The official message from Microsoft remains the same, though:

Internet access is required to install and activate all the latest releases of apps and services included in all Microsoft 365 subscription plans. Note that if you are an existing subscriber, you do not need to reinstall or purchase another subscription. 

For Microsoft 365 plans, Internet access is also needed to manage your subscription account, for example to install Office apps on other PCs or to change billing options. Internet access is also required to access documents stored on OneDrive, unless you install the OneDrive desktop app

You should also connect to the Internet regularly to keep your version of Microsoft 365 up to date and to benefit from automatic upgrades. If you do not connect to the Internet at least every 31 days, your apps will go into reduced functionality mode, which means that you can view or print your documents but cannot edit the documents or create new ones. To reactivate your apps, simply reconnect to the Internet. 

You do not need to be connected to the Internet to use the Office apps, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, because the apps are fully installed on your computer.

(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-365-family/cfq7ttc0k5dm?activetab=pivot:faqtab)

"You experience is something new. I have not seen anyone else mention this problem."

It indeed is relatively new. I had been searching everywhere why this was happening suddenly. The first post I saw was the reddit post mentioned earlier who also encountered it. I also found this one (though not relatively new) https://office-watch.com/2018/office-365-counts-sign-ins/ where it states it now counts sign-in's instead of installs which I guess what is happening. I guess it is the new way of how Microsoft now deals with its product. There was a topic made on the suggestion box for MS Office Word that people can vote on https://word.uservoice.com/forums/304924-word-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/40499542-require-option-to-remain-signed-out-of-office-acco

I had also tried online repair and uninstall / re-install in the hopes that it was just a bug, but alas. Thanks for trying it though! (hope you trying didn't mess-up anything in your installation).

Love to hear other peoples' experiences. Your replies, however, continuously assumed I was doing things that I really was not doing (even to the point as to say I was trying to get around license limitations) and gave clear indications that you did not read my question carefully, even when your experience is different than mine. If you can't see what your replies were about..... indeed Good luck to you too dude!