Cannot activate Office Apps with High Sierra

Success, Thank You so much Rafael you are a legend, it took me a few attempt to get it through, I will explain a few detail for any novice like me using terminal through the mitmproxy app. Tomorrow when I got a bit more time. Once again a big thank you. Jean-Luc

Rafael, I am so grateful for your work around and very kind assistance with the process.

As you very correctly stated, this method requires very quick input from the user, to manually select, alter and submit the intercepted request. It requires a fair bit of repetitive practice to do it in under 30s.

I found that learning and practising the mitmproxy tutorial is a must as well as learning some of the keyboard short cuts.

Going through the process I had saved in a text document the Full URL with the access token.

Beware I found that after a few attempts or a restart, the values changed, to avoid frustration to novice like me, I recommend once you get lost in the process to quit all application, run Microsoft_Office_License_Removal_2.7, to clear the system.

Then start again from scratch following the full method as supplied by Rafael

One more thing, below is a summary detail of typing keys to make it clearer for all for the end sequence.

Make sure - Certificate is trusted
Proxy is enabled
Shortcut i : /oauth20_authorize.srf then Hit ENTER
shortcut f : login.live.com then Hit ENTER
Launch MS App (Excel) to validate enter user and next
Within the intercepted request, modify the following response properties:
a. Response headers (shortcut e 9 , then a to add row):
Type the word: Location then Hit TAB to move cursor under Value column
Then Paste the full URL you copied before (the one that looks like "https://login.live.com/oauth20_authorize.srf? lc=1046#access_token=..." ( easier to save it in a text document with the above command to access it quickly)
After a few seconds one the pasted text is shown
Hit ESC to stop editing it highlight the whole text in darker colour
Hit q once,
b. Response code (shortcut e c ): 302 Hit ENTER
Hit a Hit a Hit a Hit a
If done within 30 Second it activates my Excel Application, as I did do it with Excel when I checked the other MS Aps Word and PowerPoint were also activated.

Hi guys,

I also went through the massive trouble of attempting to install Office in a High Sierra machine just recently. After a lot of back-and-forth, looking for as much info as I could gather from forums like this, I finally got a procedure that allowed me to do it - however, it takes a lot of steps to get there as it basically requires you to man-in-the-middle the whole thing to get an auth code generated and replied back to the Office App. Also, it worked to get all apps authenticated except for MS Teams.

I don't provide any guarantees that this will work for you. If you want to try it, make sure that you know what you're doing, and try it at your own risk: https://gist.github.com/rafaelfonte/56b9fb80daed8c586433e82859ccb876

This procedure involves intercepting the authentication window request url that is called just before the page goes blank with a local proxy tool, going to that URL in your browser, copying the auth code URL and then forcing the authentication window to that URL via a HTTP redirect. Still, a lot more hassle than what should at all be expected, just to overcome limitations from software that is poorly maintained by Microsoft when it comes to supporting users on legacy platforms that were working fine just a few years prior.

Also, I haven't taken any screen captures of URLs or such while doing it. What's documented there comes out of memory alone. I might come back to it later to fill in a few more details in the future.

(EDIT: Just reviewed the doc to make it easier to follow and made a few corrections to make it more clear).

Hello Rafael,

I'm so grateful for your guide (and also additional notes from Jean-LucWa) that I can successfully aunthenticate my Office 365 on my Mac High Sierra again.

Thank you so much!

One further question:

After i worked on activate the Words, other apps - Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook are automatically authenticated as well. Except OneDrive which will show blank page when click on sign in.

Is it still possible to have any workaround to sign in to OneDrive.

Appreciate your advice.

Many thanks!

Cheers

Hi RATLSNAKE,

I tried following these steps on the 2016 version of Office. Here is what I found:

• I installed Office Word 2016 15.11 (got it from an update page from MS). When trying to activate it, it gave me a "Network Connectivity error". I couldn't see any flows in the mitmproxy tool after enabling the proxy setting. I think think for older versions of Office 2016 we won't get any luck
• In then found a 32-bit installer for Office 2016, from MS as well. This installed Office 15.25 with all applications (Outlook is installed also but it can't run due to some incompatibility issue). I then tried to follow the same steps re. capturing the authentication URL, getting an activation code URL and then trying to redirect it again. The good news is: it worked, with the exact same steps!

If you'd like to try it as well, this is where I got the installer from (look at the download link under the 32-bit installation reversion section):

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/office-for-mac/office-2016-for-mac-64-bit-upgrade#options-for-reverting-to-32-bit-installations

Hopefully this version of Office will work on your machine - if it does, you should be able to follow the same guide to get it to work.

If you'd like to check the version of Office you're running, click the "About" option.

I just updated the gist once more, with a WIP version of an alternate method that trades off most of the fiddling with mitmproxy for some automated steps, assuming that you can run some simple MacOS Terminal commands. It basically uses a mitmproxy addon to help you with the workaround. I'll come back to it later to add some details:

https://gist.github.com/rafaelfonte/56b9fb80daed8c586433e82859ccb876#alternate-method---mitmproxy-addon-wip

It assumes that you have Firefox installed to get the URL you should browse to quickly, but even without it you should be able to use it. The main benefit from it is that it does the auth login redirect automatically for you once you have the Auth code URL at hand - whereas in the original method you are required to apply the changes manually and within a time limit, which can be challenging.