Cannot activate Office Apps with High Sierra

for Tomboltwood and Twilightmist: when you attempt to activate Office using the email address of your Office account, is that same email account in the Mac Mail tool active? In my case, that email account is inactive but when I insert an active account into the activation screen, I get a response. I cannot test this further because I cannot get the Mail tool to accept the email account and I keep getting the error message that the account name and password could not be verified. You may have more success or the activation issue might be caused by something else entirely, of course, but it's worth checking.

There is no resolution. An Office 365 subscription will not activate software installed on High Sierra. If you wish to have functioning Microsoft Office products on your computer, the option remains to purchase Office 2016 for Mac from a retailer. Noting that end of support for Office 2016 was reached on October 13, 2020 so we're on our own for nutting out any technical problems that arise from continued use of that software.

I posted the following earlier today. I contacted Microsoft Support and spoke with an agent on chat who was able to cancel and refund my Office 365 subscription. Hope this helps someone else.

I too have discovered this same problem after purchasing a 365 subscription today. High Sierra 10.13.6

I had fully functional office software installed on the machine, previous subscription was through an organisation I no longer am engaged with so office files have been read-only for some months.

1. I ran through Ryan.W's suggestion to remove existing licences.
2. I uninstalled existing office and reinstalled from the link provided here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/version-of-office-365-for-mac-os-101316-high/b156a0e4-99ba-4163-a50f-29078d9998c2

As described in the original question, when attempting to activate office, I am able to enter in my email address in the sign in page. Clicking Next opens the next page. This page is devoid of anything, nowhere to enter password, no feedback as to what might have gone wrong. Just a blank, white page.

If I can't get in through the front door, how can I contact the team at Office 365 to activate my software in a different way, e.g. remotely?

Amanda

Hi Ryan,

I can log into my Microsoft account without any problems from a browser, email or Onedrive. The Office version I have downloaded is 16.43 (I have tried 16.41 as well). The download and installation process seems to go perfectly. However, when first opening any App, I get the welcome screen and then a screen to enter my account ID. That seems to be accepted but then, when I expected to enter in my password, there is just a blank screen that doesn’t change. I have an Office 365 subscription and my internet connection is good. High Sierra 10:13.6 is, I know, old but my Macbook Pro is also old and cannot take later Mac Operating Systems. It seems a shame to have a laptop that is perfectly serviceable but cannot be used for Office apps.

You will need to purchase Office 2016 for Mac from a retailer if you wish to continue using Office products in High Sierra.

I spoke with Microsoft Support on chat today and got a refund for my Office 365 subscription. I can't even update my browsers to sufficiently acceptable versions to run 365 on the web.

On Nov 1, 2024 I experienced this EXACT issue with Excel (v16.43 running on High Sierra) suddenly claiming my license needed to be renewed or that it was insufficient. Tried to activate and was unable to enter password due to blank screen as described so well in this thread. It seemed so odd to me because my OTHER High Sierra Excel 16.43 was doing just fine. Then I found this thread and gave up: I turned off my router and went to bed.

Next day (Nov 2, 2024) I turned on my router, had breakfast, logged into my mac user account on the machine where Excel had not been working the night before, and - lo and behold - I was able to edit and save and was not even asked to activate.

Your guess is as good as mine, but I felt compelled to add my experience to this thread for others who might find it and therefore not be completely discouraged.

I managed to get it to work by doing the following:

Force Quit: Office App

Force Quit: Finder (and anything else found in there).

Do this from here… click on the Apple logo top left of screen, click on Force Quit, highlight app and click on the Force Quit button.

Hope it works for you too…