Why does signing out suddenly de-activate office?

Anonymous
2020-07-16T15:23:12+00:00

I have office 365. I used to be able to sign out of an office application and the application still worked. I recently made the mistake of updating the office application where Office 365 is now Microsoft 365. It now seems I HAVE to sign in and stay signed in on my own computer where I downloaded and installed my office products to keep using MS Office. When I sign out, the office product deactivates. I don't want to be signed in to use the product that I paid for. It now means that everyone in my family who use the same computer also use my Office account with my name on each office application. Why did this policy change and can we get the previous policy back?

At https://www.reddit.com/r/Office365/comments/fyzfe6/how_to_logout_from_office_365_word_without/ a user commented:

"Yes you used to be able to sign out of Office 365 and it would still stay activated based on the original MS account that has the Office 365 subscription on it... BUT NOW since they changed the name to Microsoft 365 the NEW installers/program are different and if you sign out then it will deactivate Office and make you sign back in... if you updated from an older install then it still seems to let you log out even with the newest updates... but if you did an Online repair then you will be forced to stay signed in... once signed in with a valid subscription account you can sign in with any another microsoft account instead and it will keep the activation still.."

Please revert this manner of using Office products that have been paid for.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-07-16T18:16:34+00:00

    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.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-07-16T18:19:39+00:00

    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.

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  3. Stefan Blom 353.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-07-16T18:27:37+00:00

    Yes, I believe I commented in another thread that one of my installations behaved as if sign-in was mandatory, at least for some types of installations. :-(

    This clearly must be investigated further.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-07-18T13:57:32+00:00

    I had a friend look into it. He tried it on several machine and could only recreate the problem on one machine ... !

    .

    So although as Stephan has noted the official position remains the same, ie this is not supposed to be happening. My friend noted that MS will do what ever it feels like, whenever it feels like doing it.

    I was going to create a Feedback, but since the Windows 10 Feedback hub does not work on my machine, and the there is no UserVoice site.

    Could someone send a feedback to MS telling them "we are not amused" ...

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  5. Stefan Blom 353.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-07-18T17:29:33+00:00

    I'm just speculating here, but it is possible that installations which rely on corporate or organization accounts behave differently from home user (family, personal) installations.

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