Why does the "Restart Office to apply privacy settings" not go away

There is none. We can only speculate that Microsoft’s application authentication model is fatally fractured. It likely contains dated code that the company’s most recently hired software engineers are unable to figure out. If so, much software will need to be rewritten from scratch to a new design specs. Microsoft’s silence about a now month-old and acutely embarrassing problem is deafening. Careers are on the line here so we can only wait.

I have done EVERYTHING and this issue still happens. WHAT IS THE FIX??????

Restart to apply privacy settings

Okay, then...remind me not to sign out of my Office account, because I sure as heck don't want to go through all of that to get back to operational status.

I'm sure MS has other things on its mind today, but as Lorenkou points out, while these messages are a small annoyance at the moment, the issue can quickly become a pretty big annoyance for anyone who happens to sign out of their Office account.

C'mon, MS. Do better. You broke it; you should be able to fix it.

Hello - I've been following this thread closely as I too am experiencing the exact same problem (and have done repeated installs/reinstalls/clean installs, even full Windows reinstalls) on 2 separate Win 11 PCs on my home network.

I'm beyond frustrated and annoyed about this, but I have found a couple of additional things that might help Microsoft find the solution here:

• First, I've noticed that this privacy message at the top of the Office apps can just be ignored and closed, with no effect on Office performing. It's irritating as hell to see this stupid privacy message every time you open an Office app, but there doesn't seem to be any impact on Office activation or performance if you just close that message, and keep doing your work.
• Similarly, clicking "Ok" on the "Restart Required" popup that occurs after you open an Office app also seems to have zero impact on activation You'll see the same stupid privacy message the next time you open any Office app, but again, everything in Office still continues working and you remain activated even after restarting.
• what seems to trigger an actual activation error is if you "Sign Out" from your Office account. Once you sign back in, now you get all these activation failures and "issues with your office account", which cannot be fixed by SARA, repair or even fully clean uninstalling/Re-installing Office.

So for the time being, I've found best solution is just ignore the Privacy message and the "Restart required" popups, and keep on working. Annoying as anything, and totally unacceptable, but Office actually seems to work fine with them happening.

Once the Activation issue occurs, (periodically I try signing out to see if the issue has maybe solved itself, etc) I've also found a (painful but sort of effective) fix: If you add a new (local) profile on Windows, then delete your existing Windows profile, and then attach your Windows account to the Local account, Office seems to go back to working fine on the new Profile -- although the stupid Privacy message will start coming up pretty soon again, but now you know just to ignore it and keep working.

Of course this solution requires you to save a back up all your current files and docs to connect the new profile to, and it will cause you to have to reinstall most of the other apps etc that you have on your current profile etc -- so it's really not a good long-term solution.

Hope this helps (someone) a bit, and of course I'm dying to hear about Microsoft's progress in resolving this, or on others' experience getting around it.

I have been trying everything I can from Microsoft's support pages, and nothing fixes the issue.

This solution does not work!